POMEPS
STUDIES
22
Contemporary
Turkish Politics
December 7, 2016
Contents
Religion, the State, and the Party
The Clash of Islamists: The crisis of the Turkish state and democracy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Sebnem Gumuscu, Middlebury College
Forward-Facing and Behind the Scenes: Shifts in Political Islam in Post-July 15th Turkey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
By Kristin Fabbe, Harvard Business School
Good things don’t last forever: Arab uprisings and the Turkish model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
By Ekrem Karakoc, Binghamton University (SUNY)
Identity politics
Piety, Intimacy, and Emotions: Political Symbolism of the AKP Government. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Senem Aslan, Bates College
Towards Erdogan and the East: Conspiracies and public perception in post-coup Turkey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
By Kimberly Guiler, The University of Texas at Austin
AKP’s Foreign Policy and Its Party Identity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Esen Kirdiş, Rhodes College
Opportunity Missed: Identity Alignment and Turkey’s Kurdish Question. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Lisel Hintz, Barnard College
Women’s Representation across National and Local Office in Turkey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
By Abdullah Aydogan, Melissa Marschall, and Marwa Shalaby, Rice University’s Baker Institute
The Kurdish Question
The Many Faces of Kurdish Political Representation in Turkey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Sabri Çiftçi, the Michael W. Suleiman Chair in Arab and Arab-American Studies at Kansas State University
Counting the Uncounted: Measuring the Politicization of Kurdish Identity in Turkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Avital Livny, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Why did the PKK declare Revolutionary People’s War in July 2015?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Şener Aktürk, Koç University, Istanbul
Politics of Confinement: Curfews and Civilian Control in Turkish Counterinsurgency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Aysegul Aydin & Cem Emrence, University of Colorado-Boulder, Leiden University
Foreign Fighters from Turkey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Güneş Murat Tezcür, Jalal Talabani Endowed Chair of Kurdish Political Studies, University of Central Florida
Conclusion
Is there still hope for Turkish democracy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
A. Kadir Yildirim, Rice University's Baker Institute and Marc Lynch, George Washington University
The Project on Middle East Political Science
The Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) is a collaborative network that aims to increase the impact of political scientists
specializing in the study of the Middle East in the public sphere and in the academic community. POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is
based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New
York and the Henry Luce Foundation. For more information, see http://www.pomeps.org.
2
Introduction
T
urkey has been in the news repeatedly in 2016, from the coup attempt of July to the
subsequent government purges to its renewed fight against the PKK and crackdown on
Kurdish populations. However surprising these developments may appear for an outside observer,
they are deeply rooted in the history of the Turkish state, the evolution of the ruling Justice and
Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), and the complex identity politics of the
region. In October, more than a dozen scholars of Turkish politics gathered at Rice University’s
Baker Institute in Houston for a Project on Middle East Political Science workshop to delve into
some of these underlying themes. The memos produced for that workshop have been published
individually on the POMEPS website and the full collection is now available as a free download
here. The authors in this collection provide rich context, new data, and sharp analysis of the
nuanced challenges facing the country and the region today.
The relationship between state and religion is one of the key issues to understand Turkish politics.
Sebnem Gumuscu describes how competition between two main Islamist organizations evolved
and influenced the government organization, somewhat paradoxically diminishing the checks
and balances of the secular state that expedited the government’s ability to purge. Kristin Fabbe
examines the direct and indirect ways religion and government interact and asks who might fill
the bureaucratic void left by the Gülen movement. The religion-state nexus not only influences
domestic affairs in crucial ways but its effects also shape Turkey’s stature within the regional. Once
heralded as a shining beacon of democracy in the region, Turkey is now sinking on many indices of
democracy and freedom. Ekrem Karakoc illustrates the fluctuating popularity of the Turkish model
since the Arab uprisings in other MENA countries. Unsurprisingly, Islamist parties tended to look
up to the success of the AKP more than other groups. Yet the often-referenced secular/ Islamist
dichotomy fails to get at the complexities of these movements and their relationships with power.
The malleable use of identity is a recurring theme in this collection. Senem Aslan paints a
fascinating picture of the diverse ways in which AKP leaders use public displays of crying. In
a region where machismo and tough leadership dominate political discourse, this invoking of
emotion and victimhood serves a unique purpose for a party that has been in power now for more
than a dozen years. Kimberly Guiler also takes up this question of victimhood, examining the use
of conspiracy theories in the wake of the July 2016 coup as the AKP attempted to centralize power
and promote national unity. Esen Kirdiş shows how shifts in the AKP government’s identity can be
measured by the shifts in its foreign policy, from moderate Western-facing at the beginning of its
tenure in office, to increasingly more Islam and identity focused as its support and base grew and
now to a nationalist orientation as its support is wavering. Lisel Hintz describes how the Republic
Nationalist orientation of previous governments gave way to the Ottoman-inspired and Islamfocused inclusive politics that downplayed the importance of ethnicity, opening an all too brief
window of opportunity for addressing the Kurdish question. In their analysis of female political
representation, Abdullah Aydogan, Melissa Marschall, and Marwa Shalaby explore the effects of
gender roles and norms on women’s nomination and winning at the local and national level offices.
Counterintuitively, they find that national offices are more open to female representation than local
levels.
3
Introduction
Expanding on the Kurdish question, Sabri Çiftçi illustrates the unique challenges to ethnic
descriptive representation of Kurds in Turkey, especially in the context of conflict. The lack of
demographic data remains a main challenge, but Avital Livny fills in the missing information gap
with some innovative new survey data to measure Kurdish politicization. Şener Aktürk presents and
analyzes several often-cited hypotheses about why the PKK ended its ceasefire in 2015, suggesting
that foreign policy may have played a larger role than many believe. During this period of renewed
war, Aysegul Aydin and Cem Emrence illustrate how curfews have been used not only as a means of
civilian control but also selectively to punish areas that have voted for the Kurdish party and to entice
voters who live in more competitive electoral districts. Güneş Murat Tezcür presents his unique
dataset of Turkish foreign fighters leaving the country to join either nationalist struggles of Kurds
or the religious call of ummah and caliphate, showing how these individuals are similar and very
different and what this means for Turkish society.
.
Lauren Baker
December 2016
4
Religion, the State, and the Party
5
The Clash of Islamists:
The crisis of the Turkish state and democracy
Sebnem Gumuscu, Middlebury College
Two powerful movements – the Milli Gorus (National
Outlook) and Fethullah Gulen’s Hizmet – have dominated
Islamic politics in Turkey since the 1970s. Capitalizing on
their increasing power and presence in different realms of
life, these Islamic movements allied in 2007 to put an end
to tutelary democracy guided by the secular establishment,
i.e. military and judiciary.1 This marriage of convenience
delivered benefits for both actors; the AKP successfully
eliminated the veto powers in the secular state,2 while
the Gulen movement steered clear of the pressure of the
secular establishment and accelerated its penetration of the
state apparatus. The end of the tutelary regime in Turkey
has not led to democratic consolidation though, as many
had hoped. Instead the two Islamic movements in the
course of their alliance and their subsequent struggle for
power undermined democratic politics, the rule of law,
civil liberties and governance capacity of the Turkish state.
strategies. The most important difference between the
Milli Gorus and Gulen’s Hizmet, therefore, does not stem
from their ideological aspirations but from their respective
strategies of replacing the secular republican regime with
an Islamic order.
The Milli Gorus movement emerged in the early 1970s
and established successive political parties to mobilize
and represent marginalized and disenfranchised pious
constituencies with an explicitly Islamic discourse. This
political mobilization via explicitly Islamist messages led to
the closure of several Islamic parties by the Constitutional
Court. The final incarnation of the movement following
the closure of the Fazilet Partisi (Virtue Party) in 2000
brought about a split and the birth of the ruling Adalet ve
Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP) in
2001. The AKP came to power in late 2002 and eventually
turned into a dominant party by way of establishing an
electoral hegemony in subsequent elections.3
Political Islam in Turkey came to be dominated by these
two movements following distinct methods: 1) the political
parties of the Milli Gorus movement seeking the capture
of political power and the state apparatus to Islamicize the
society top-down; and 2) the Gulen movement seeking
Islamization of the individual, the society, and eventually
the state through da’wa and bottom-up mobilization.
Despite this difference in their methods, both movements
shared the ideal of establishing an order based on some
version of Islam, which, for them, is not only a religion but
also a total system encapsulating and regulating all aspects
of life. Both movements were inspired by Salafi reformists
of the 19th century such as Jamal Al-din al-Afghani and
Muhammad Abduh as well as their more conservative
followers like Hasan al Banna. Also, both movements
strived to strike a synthesis of Salafi reformism with Sufi
traditions in Anatolia. In short, they agreed that Muslims
should live under Islamic states and converged on an
equally statist, authoritarian, hierarchic and anti-pluralist
outlooks albeit from different angles and using different
The Gulen movement (or Hizmet as their members would
call it) was established in 1966 with the goal of fighting
communism and raising a “Golden generation” that would
be pious, hardworking, and well educated with a strong
sense of solidarity and “military-like discipline.”4 The leader
of the movement, Fethullah Gulen, wary of secular regime’s
repression, rejected explicit political mobilization instead
building a network of educational institutions, civil society
organizations, media companies and businesses motivated
by Islamic principles. One of the primary, yet less publicized,
targets of Fethullah Gulen remained colonization of the state
bureaucracy with the members of the “Golden generation,”5
primarily through manipulation of bureaucratic recruitment
processes, i.e. centrally administered tests or appointments
based on drawing of lots. The following excerpt from one
of his taped sermons in the 1990s reveals the movement’s
intentions of penetrating the state as well as its gradualist
and non-confrontational strategy:
6
Religion, the State, and the Party
You must move in the arteries of the system without
anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the
power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the
followers] must continue like this. If they do something
prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims
will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria,
like in 1982 [in] Syria … like in the yearly disasters and
tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must
wait for the time when you are complete and conditions
are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry
it … You must wait until such time as you have gotten all
the state power, until you have brought to your side all the
power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Until
that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking
an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It
would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done
is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my
feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence … trusting
your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave
here—[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you
must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed
here.6
the party. In the meantime, the Gulen movement had been
under scrutiny between 1999 and 2006 as Fethullah Gulen
himself was tried in absentia for conspiring against the
secular state by way of infiltrating the security forces since
the 1980s . Then, in 2004 the National Security Council
(MGK) adopted a document that identified the Gulen
movement as a threat to the Turkish state.
The AKP-Gulen alliance was established to end the
military tutelage in particular and undermine the secular
establishment in general, “using all necessary means” in
Yavuz’s words.8 A key instrument of this alliance was trials
by “special courts, ” which targeted disparate groups within
and outside of the state, including political dissidents
and foci of power that could threaten the two Islamic
movements. The Ergenekon and Balyoz cases accused
several retired and on-duty members of the Turkish armed
forces of conspiring to overthrow the AKP government
with the help of the media, universities, and civil society
activists; OdaTV in conjunction with Ergenekon case
incriminated critical journalists; Devrimci Karargah tried
members of a radical leftist organization along with a
former police chief, members of the National Intelligence
Organization (MIT) and journalists; the KCK trials
prosecuted academics, civil society activists, unionists,
journalists, politicians, students, and members of the
MIT for association with the KCK (Kurdistan Workers’
Party’s urban network); and finally, the Sike case accused
prominent figures of the largest football clubs in Turkey of
engaging in organized crime.
While the Milli Gorus parties oscillated between
confrontation and accommodation in its relationship
with the secular regime in particular and the West in
general, the Gulen movement opted for appeasement and
accommodation7 and avoided outright confrontation with
the secular establishment and the non-Muslim world as
testified by Gulen’s words above. These two movements
thus kept their distance until 2002 and had fundamental
differences vis-à-vis their respective relationship with the
Turkish state, the secular establishment, and the Western
world.
In the course of these trials, the judges and public
prosecutors frequently violated the fundamental rights of
the defendants. Prolonged pre-trial detention became the
norm; the prosecutors extensively relied on secret witness
testimony, fabricated evidence, and frequently violated the
due process.9 The courts also imposed a media blackout
on these probes limiting public scrutiny over the cases.
Since the start of the special courts, 4,091 investigations
have been launched against journalists, who reported
on these probes, for breaches of the confidentiality of
investigations.10 Such violations led to changes in Turkey’s
scores in democracy indices; in its 2013 report, Freedom
With the AKP’s rise to power in 2002, the relationship
between the two movements improved remarkably. The
rapprochement of the AKP and the Gulen movement
eventually turned into an alliance against the secular
establishment by 2007. Among the triggers of this alliance
were a series of political crises the AKP faced in 2007 and
2008, including the presidential elections, e-memorandum
of the chief of the general staff, and the closure case against
7
House lowered Turkey’s civil liberties score from 3 to 4
(where 1 is the most free and 7 is the least) “due to the
pretrial detention of thousands of individuals—including
Kurdish activists, journalists, union leaders, students, and
military officers—in campaigns that many believe to be
politically motivated. The conduct of the trials, together
with mass arrests of Kurdish activists in other cases,
prompted widespread concern about the government’s
commitment to civil liberties and the rule of law.”11
As the rule of law and meritocracy deteriorated, so did
fundamental rights and civil liberties. In the course of the
AKP-Gulen alliance, the pressure over the media mounted,
the number of incarcerated journalists increased, selfcensorship soared, and Turkey’s rankings in media
freedom indices rapidly deteriorated, as shown in Figure
1. By April 2012, there were more than 100 journalists
in prison. The government, in the meantime, publicly
defended the detention of journalists in cases like KCK and
Ergenekon.16
As the parameters of civil-military relations changed
through sham trials, the AKP-Gulen alliance set to
redesign the judicial system. In a constitutional referendum
in 2010, both the party and the movement ran a joint
campaign in favor of a yes vote. Fethullah Gulen, who
traditionally denied any involvement in politics, publicly
condoned the reform package that would restructure the
higher courts and judicial councils and allow for further
penetration of the judiciary by the Gulenists. Indicating
the significance of this constitutional reform for the
movement, Gulen suggested that even the dead should
rise from their graves to vote in favor of the package. The
referendum passed with 58 percent of the votes, and soon
the Gulen movement secured its control over the supreme
judicial council and several chambers of the higher
courts12 in addition to the special courts, which comprised
Gulenists’ stronghold in the judiciary.
Figure 1 Turkey’s rankings in Reporters without Borders
Index
The AKP-Gulen alliance, however, soon disintegrated as
the two Islamic movements clashed over the distribution
of power in the “new Turkey.” In fact, at various time both
Cemil Cicek and Besir Atalay, two prominent figures
in the AKP, complained of Gulen movement’s growing
involvement in decision-making processes.17 The conflict
rapidly escalated as the Gulen movement, entrenched in
security forces and the judiciary, attempted to undermine
Erdogan’s power through a series of investigations,
including a graft probe in late 2013, while Erdogan in
retribution cut the major sources of social capital and
finance for the Gulen movement, curtailed its media
power, and weakened the movement’s presence in the
judiciary and security forces.
A pro-government columnist admitted that the Gulen
movement had grown 15 fold under Erdogan’s premiership
between 2003 and 2014.13 In a recent interview, Hakan
Yavuz affirmed this assessment with the claim that the
AKP government had indeed ceded the control of the
ministries of education, internal affairs and judiciary to the
Gulen movement14, allowing the colonization of the state
by its partner. Perhaps more importantly, Erdogan himself
in the early stages of the conflict reproached the movement
for being ungrateful to the AKP, which had given whatever
the Gulen movement asked for.15 In short, the AKP-Gulen
alliance replaced merit with ideological and political
criteria in bureaucratic appointments to replace the
remnants of the secular establishment while substantially
inflating the Gulenists’ presence in the state.
Fighting its former ally deeply entrenched in the
state apparatus, the AKP government resorted to
8
Religion, the State, and the Party
unconstitutional measures and bypassed the rule of law as
it set to eradicate the Gulenist cadres from the state. The
power struggle between former allies further undermined
civil liberties, independence of the judiciary18 (or whatever
was left of it), and the rule of law. The government
banned Twitter and YouTube prior to 2014 local elections;
reshuffled thousands of police officers and prosecutors;
passed new legislation to redesign the supreme judicial
council; denied access to the satellite systems for proGulen TV stations; seized the property of leading
businessmen; and appointed trustees to companies,
foundations, universities and newspapers with links to the
Gulen movement following the graft probe of December
2013.19
companies, with alleged ties to the Gulen movement, by
the end of July;27 the ministry of finance placed injunction
on the property of more than 100,000 individuals in the
month following the coup attempt.28 As confirmed by the
deputy prime minister on October 19, more than 115,000
people have been subject to post-coup investigations.29
While these measures seriously threaten the rule of
law, civil liberties, and property rights and might cause
irreparable damage to individuals, whose connection with
the Gulen movement or the coup attempt is not yet proven
in a court of law, ongoing purges also put substantial
pressure over the Turkish state and its capacity to provide
public goods such as security, education, and health care
for its people.
The coup attempt on July 15, 2016, according to the
AKP, was the Gulenists’ final attempt to takeover the
government. Killing 240 people and injuring more than
2000, the coup attempt allowed the government to declare
emergency law sidelining the European Convention of
Human Rights and the constitution. In a series of executive
decrees, President Erdogan and the cabinet suspended
88,056 civil servants, including 27,715 teachers,20 and
expelled more than 40,000 civil servants, including 7,669
police officers, 3,390 judges and prosecutors, 21 and 4,451
military officers for their alleged connections to the coup.
Turkey’s two Islamic movements, motivated by the
creation of an Islamic state and society, successfully ended
tutelary democracy guided by the secular establishment.
30
However, in the course of this process, the AKP-Gulen
alliance weakened all sources of potential checks and
balances – democratic and undemocratic alike – over
the executive: the secular military, judiciary, mainstream
media, and civil society. Paradoxically, their success
has not only led to the AKP’s political hegemony and
Gulenist colonization of the state but also a bitter power
struggle between former allies. This power struggle in
turn undermined both democratic politics and state’s
governance capacity in Turkey.
Democratic backsliding gained further momentum
under the emergency law, which extended detention
period up to 30 days22 for more than 40,000 people placed
under detention. Of those detained, 20,355 have been
arrested23, 105 of whom are journalists awaiting trial. In
the meantime, the government shut down 170 TV stations,
newspapers, magazines, and news agencies, including proKurdish, pro-secular and left wing media.24 The decrees
also closed down 35 health care facilities, 934 schools,
109 dormitories, 104 foundations, 1125 associations,
15 universities and 19 trade unions.25 In an attempt to
redesign the institutions of higher education, an executive
decree issued on October 29 canceled rector elections in
public universities and expelled more than 1,200 academics
from their positions.26 Businesses were not immune to
this crackdown as the courts appointed trustees to 94
Author’s acknowledgments: I would like to thank Berk Esen
for his comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of the
essay.
(Endnotes)
1 Esen, Berk and Sebnem Gumuscu, “Rising competitive
authoritarianism in Turkey,” Third World Quarterly 37, no.
9 (2016): 1581-1606.
2 Ciddi, Sinan and Berk Esen “Turkey’s Republican
People’s Party: Politics of Opposition under a Dominant
Party System”, Turkish Studies, 15:3, (2014) 419-441
9
3 Gumuscu, Sebnem. “The Emerging Predominant
Party System in Turkey.” Government and Opposition,
48, no. 2 (2013): 223–244; Keyman E. Fuat and Sebnem
Gumuscu, Democracy, Identity and Foreign Policy, London:
Palgrave Macmillan 2014; Müftüler-Bac, Meltem, and
E. Fuat Keyman. “The Era of Dominant-party Politics.”
Journal of Democracy 23, no. 1 (2012): 85–99; Ayan Musil,
Pelin. “Emergence of a dominant party system after
multipartyism: theoretical implications from the case of
the AKP in Turkey.” South European Society and Politics
20.1 (2015): 71-92; Sayarı, Sabri. “Back to a Predominant
Party System: The November 2015 Snap Election in
Turkey.” South European Society and Politics (2016): 1-18.
10 European Commission Progress Report for Turkey,
2010
11 Freedom House, www.freedomhouse.org
12 The constitutional reform package permitted the
election of a new HSYK (Supreme Council of Judges
and Prosecutors). Prior to the elections the bureaucrats
of the Ministry of Justice prepared and circulated a list
of candidates. Not surprisingly, every single name on
the list was elected while no other candidate supported
by other groups—Kemalists and non-Kemalists—were
elected to the council. “The HSYK has the authority to
conduct the following procedures concerning the civil
and administrative judiciary judges and prosecutors:
Admission to the profession, appointment, transference,
granting temporary authorization, promotion, allocation
as first class, distributing cadres, making decisions about
those who are not considered suitable to continue to
perform their profession, rendering decisions about
disciplinary punishments, suspension from office; and
to issue circulars exclusively about the above mentioned
subjects and the inspections, researches, examinations
and investigations regarding the judges and prosecutors.”
http://www.hcjp.gov.tr/About.aspx
4 Yavuz, M. Hakan, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey,
NY: Oxford University Press, 2003: 189
5 Yavuz suggests that Gulen’s ultimate goal is to become
a political and cultural bridge between the state and
the conservative middle class and upwardly mobile
technocrats (2003, p. 199). Some Islamist groups in Turkey
contend that “by gradually penetrating the state Gulen
and others will be able to transform its Kemalist and
antireligious foundation and render impossible any repeat
of ‘Jacobin’ assault on Islam that Mustafa Kemal and his
coterie carried out” (2003, p. 202).
13 http://www.yenisafak.com/yazarlar/AbdulkadirSelvi/
once-sulhname-sonra-operasyon-46996
6 Quoted in Sharon-Krespin, Rachel. “Fethullah Gülen’s
Grand Ambition.” Middle East Quarterly Winter (2009),
pp. 55-66.
14 http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/prof-dr-hakan-yavuzcemaatciler-savasi-kaybetmis-naziler-gibi-hocaya-karsiisyan-var-40203038
7 Yavuz, M. Hakan, Toward and Islamic Enlightenment,
NY: Oxford University Press, 2013.
15 Erdogan’s speech available at https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=-m9NL8xz_Hw
8 Yavuz, 2013: 213.
9 Doğan, Pınar, and Dani Rodrik. Yargı, Cemaat ve Bir
Darbe Kurgusunun İcyüzü. Istanbul: Destek Yayinevi, 2014.
10
Religion, the State, and the Party
16 In his speech in the Council of Europe in 2011 Erdogan
defended the detainments of two journalists (Ahmet Sık
and Nedim Sener) by likening Sık’s unpublished book to
a bomb: “It is a crime to use a bomb, but it is also a crime
to use materials from which a bomb is made. If informed
that all materials needed to construct a bomb have been
placed in a certain location, wouldn’t the security forces
collect these materials?” Quoted in “Turkish PM rebuffs
criticism over press freedom” HürriyetDailyNews, April
13 2011. Erdogan in a later interview sustained this view
and claimed that some books are indeed more effective
than bombs. “Erdoğan: Bazı kitaplar bombadan daha etkili”
(Some books have greater impact than bombs) Available at:
http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/25222191/#storyContinued
21 As of September 2, 2016 http://www.bbc.com/turkce/
haberler-turkiye-37253156
17 In an interview with Hakan Yavuz in 2010, a highranking advisor to the Ministry of Internal Affairs states:
“there is an increasing anger against the [Gulen] movement
within the Erdogan government because they interfere
with almost every regulation and appointment. I think the
perception that the Turkish police force is heavily recruited
by the followers of the movement is very dangerous for the
credibility of the police force in the country.” Yavuz, 2013:
218
25 http://t24.com.tr/haber/kapatilan-dernek-hastanesendika-universite-okul-ve-yurtlar,351464
22 http://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/
eskiler/2016/07/20160723-8.htm
23 As of August 17, 2016. http://www.bloomberght.com/
haberler/haber/1907559-yildirim-gozalti-sayisi-40-bintutuklu-sayisi-20-bin-355
24 As of October 29, 2016. See Turkish Journalists
Association’s press release at http://www.tgc.org.tr/
aciklamalar/1114-tgc-cumhuriyet-e-operasyonu-protestoediyoruz.html
26 http://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/
eskiler/2016/10/20161029-4.htm
27 http://www.sabah.com.tr/gundem/2016/07/28/13sirkete-daha-kayyum-atandi
28 http://t24.com.tr/haber/mal-varligina-el-koyma-nasiluygulaniyor,355039
18 Ozbudun, Ergun. “Turkey’s Judiciary and the Drift
toward Competitive Authoritarianism.” International
Spectator 50, no. 2 (2015): 42–55.
29 http://www.trthaber.com/haber/gundem/medyaninfeto-mucadelesine-katki-saglamasi-onemli-277811.html
19 http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/06/
turkey-unemployed-youth-demand-trustee-post.
html#ixzz4CUUIlGwM
30 Esen, Berk and Sebnem Gumuscu, “Rising competitive
authoritarianism in Turkey,” Third World Quarterly 37, no.
9 (2016): 1581-1606.
20 http://www.diken.com.tr/darbe-girisimi-canikli-27bin-715-ogretmen-ihrac-edildi-9-bin-465i-aciga-alindi/
11
Forward-Facing and Behind the Scenes:
Shifts in Political Islam in Post-July 15 Turkey
By Kristin Fabbe, Harvard Business School
It is well known that the failed July 2016 coup in Turkey
was quickly followed with an attempt at a full-scale purge
of the Gülen movement (and other alleged enemies),
hollowing out much of the state bureaucracy. Who will
fill the void and what role, if any, will religion play in this
process? With these questions in mind, this memo draws
from a longer working paper to briefly address several
facets of the shifting politicization of Islam in Turkey.
First, I document some of the forward-facing changes in
Turkey’s official Islam via the overt politicization of the
Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşler Başkanlığı)
against the Gülen movement, focusing on the period after
July 15th. Publicly, Erdoğan is undoubtedly working the
levers of official Islam through the Diyanet to shore-up
a display of national unity. Second, I suggest that behind
the scenes other dynamics are at play. The potential for
competition between remaining sects, religious orders,
communities and brotherhoods (cemaats and tarikats) as
well as hints that a change in official state policy towards
these groups may be underway are two additional factors
likely to shift the landscape of political Islam in the near
future.
necessarily a politicized one. Rather than simply looking
at budgets and head-counts of religious civil servants,
as I do in previous work, in this memo I give attention
to what the Diyanet’s key actors are saying and doing.
Actions and statements by Diyanet President Mehmet
Görmez and other state officials unquestioningly reveal
the politicization of the Diyanet. Indeed, the AKP is now
using the Diyanet – long a relatively apolitical arm of
the state bureaucracy – to actively further its partisan
agenda of rooting out and discrediting particular religious
enemies. I back this claim using several types of evidence
including texts from recent Friday sermons (hutbeler), a
brief overview of the proceedings of the Extraordinary
Religious Council (Din Şurası) held in August 2016, and
publicized interviews and official television statements by
Diyanet President Görmez and AKP officials. I also draw
from other press sources and currents in Turkish popular
culture to suggest what the future might hold.
The July-15th “Rush to the Mosques” and Friday Prayers
Turkish and foreign media both documented the Diyanet’s
staff and official state mosques playing a key role during
the night of July 15. Imams began voicing prayers for
martyrs as early as 11:00 PM, called the incident “fitne,”
(or incitement) and urged people to the resist the coup
attempt. In an exclusive interview with the Turkish
private TV channel NTV on August 29, Diyanet President
Görmez later said that he had learned of coup attempt
around 10 PM and quickly established a crisis management
desk together with his colleagues. According to Görmez,
the group believed their duty as Diyanet employees should
not be confined to simply performing ritual prayers. After
“consulting with their friends” the crisis committee “…
decided to stand in solidarity with the nation by sending
messages to Diyanet staff, running to the mosques, and
reading/leading prayer (sela).” Görmez stated that, “We
read/led prayer (sela) to lay claim to the law of the nation.
The Changing Face of Official Islam
In an earlier memo for POMEPS in February 2015 I argued
that “problems could arise if the AKP decides – and is able
– to leverage the Diyanet as a political weapon against the
Gülen Movement.”1 Immediately after the failed coup in
July 2016, I wrote in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage
that “It seems that time has now come.”2 Furthermore,
as I argue in a book manuscript currently under review,
recent claims about increases in the Diyanet’s influence
under AKP rule have been somewhat misleading, because
they truncate metrics, ignoring a long trajectory of
Diyanet growth that began over half a century ago.3 Here
my contention is that such metrics, truncated or not, are
also somewhat unsatisfying: a large bureaucracy is not
12
Religion, the State, and the Party
All of Turkey’s mosques were like this until morning. We
feel fortunate that we were able to offer this small bit of
support while our nation was eradiating a threat to its
very existence.”4 The Diyanet’s prayers for the martyred
continued into the following day. In an official statement
on July 19, the Diyanet announced that it would not
provide religious services, including prayers and funeral
ceremonies, for the putschists/coup plotters.5
Islam” and warned the people against being deceived
through the use of the holy religion.9
The Extraordinary Religious Council (Din Şurası)
The political content of official Friday sermons is relatively
tame and muted compared to the statements made at
the Extraordinary Religious Council held in early August.
From August 3 to 4, the Religious Council (Din Şurası), a
body that normally convenes once every five years, held
the first extraordinary meeting in its history. The agenda
was almost singularly focused on discrediting the Gülen
movement. President Erdoğan, Speaker of the Parliament
İsmail Kahraman, Deputy Prime Minister Kurtulmuş
and Diyanet President Görmez, as well as academicians,
deans of the faculties of theology from various universities,
scholars of Fıkıh and other high-ranking Diyanet officials
attended the two-day meeting.
Beyond this initial rush to the mosques, the Diyanet’s
politicization gained momentum in the weeks following
the coup attempt as evidenced in the undertones of
official Friday prayers (hutbeler). The July 29th sermon,
entitled “Exploiting the sacred values of the religion is the
greatest depravity,” makes no direct reference to the Gülen
movement or Gülen himself; but it implicitly besmirched
Gülen’s leadership, reminding followers that “We should
not surrender our heart, sense, soul, mind, ideas and will
to others. We should not give even the slightest credit
to those who call on people to become their subjects in
lieu of Allah.”6 The August 5th sermon “Worshipping is
exclusively (done) to Allah” included similar messages,
instructing pious Turks that “[w]e must not pay attention
to those who promise (us) the ‘letter of emancipation’ and
claim that the truth is exclusive to them.”7 The August 12th
sermon contained statements that appeared to be even
more directly aimed against the movement:
Görmez took an explicitly harsh approach against
Gülenists in his speech. He criticized the movement for
its hypocrisy, its double speak, and its immoral and covert
tactics. He claimed that it had now become clear that the
organization was operating a massive scam under the guise
of educational volunteers committed to principles of love
and tolerance. Even worse, in Görmez’s opinion, was that
the group had capitalized on the recent global surge in
Islamophobia to try to endear itself to West, engaging in
interfaith dialogue for the sake of “political engineering
efforts.”10 Deputy Prime Minister Kurtulmuş dubbed the
movement “the most wicked, despicable and excellently
organized group of infidelity and treachery that the Islamic
world has ever seen since the earliest days of its history.”
The government, he said, would show no mercy to those
linked to this group, and he asked Islamic scholars to
“scratch out the group from the history of Islam.”11 Erdoğan
derogatorily likened the Gülen movement to the medieval
Hashshashin/Hashashin (Haşhaşiler) religious order. He
claimed the groups shared a set of characteristics: they
both possess a good education; they have the ability to
hide their identity for a long time; they show undisputable
obedience to their leader, and; they are willing to use
violent tactics.12
Monotheistic belief constitutes the righteous and
straight path. On this path, obedience, submission
and worship are confined to Allah, who is “the one”.
On this path there is no polytheism, depravity or
sycophancy, [instead] there is cohesion between one`s
deeds and discourses and the wearing of one’s heart
on his/her sleeve. (…) On this right path, no one has
the authority to legitimize or forbid anything in line
with his personal desires. (…) Both those who attempt
to found a new religion by prioritizing themselves over
the Quran and Sunnah and those who blindly follow
such persons are on a void and futile journey.8
Finally, the August 19th sermon also implicitly accused the
Gülen movement of “stealing moral values by exploiting
13
The Din Şurası meeting culminated in a twenty-article
declaration presented by Görmez. The final declaration set
an extremely harsh tone against the Gülen movement, as
evidence by its first article, “We Do Not Consider FETÖ/
PDY to be a Religious Organization”:
situation obliges us the revisit/reconsider relations among
religion, state and society in our country, including
the establishment of its appropriate legal basis.”14 Such
sentiments were later echoed, again ambiguously, in
Görmez’s aforementioned August 29 interview:
FETÖ—which considers every path legitimate en
route to achieving its secret and dark objectives,
exploits religion and religious sentiments; which steals
our nation`s alms and blessings (sadaka, zekat and
kurban), snatching them from our children; which
distorts and destroys the basic values and concepts of
our religion; which creates opportunities and resources
for itself through un-Islamic and immoral approaches
and behaviors, depravity, malice, lies and plots;
which attempts to take the nation`s future under
its control by infiltrating all state organs and which
was caught red-handed by the nation during the
last coup attempt—cannot be named as a religious
organization. The ringleader of this structure cannot
be considered a religious scholar/pundit or a great/
esteemed teacher (hocaefendi).13
Many of the cemaat’s in Turkey have a long tradition
and they all should not be put into one single category.
. . In order for [other cemaats] not to repeat the same
mistake [as the Gülen Movement], each of them
should be self regulating. In the past, two ways of
getting rid of all the cemaats were discussed: banning
all of them or making them official by subordinating
them to the Diyanet. Neither of these two ways is right.
The right method is to set up mechanisms to make
them transparent and stick to the principles of merit
and loyalty as well as to establish their own selfdiscipline to ensure that they do not veer from the true
path of Islam.15
At this point, one can only guess how successive purges
of the Gülen movement will ultimately impact the
state’s relationship with other religious orders. The overt
politicization of the Diyanet and the foreshadowing of
a potential shift in official state policy toward religious
orders are only the first rumblings of change. With reliable
informational becoming increasingly scarce, we enter the
realm of speculation.
A New Legal Order?
Interestingly, the last four articles of the declaration from
the Din Şurası went beyond the meeting’s obvious aim of
countering and vilifying the Gülen movement to suggest
that Turkey’s official Islamic bureaucracy might begin
taking a more active role in religious regulation, especially
with respect to unofficial religious orders, communities
and brotherhood. These groups were officially banned
by Kemalist regime in 1925, but their presence is more
like an open secret in Turkish society, as they have been
functioning underground and in the open to various
degrees ever since. Article 18 of the declaration affirmed
the Diyanet’s aim of doing “joint works” with other socioreligious organizations to ensure that they do not divert
themselves from the Islamic “mainstream” and to make
sure they become more transparent and accountable. The
penultimate article of the declaration even foreshadowed
changes in the legal architecture of religion-state
relations, albeit in a vague fashion, remarking: “...This
Some believe that the weakening of the Gülen movement
vis-à-vis the state will intensify competition between
other religious orders. For example, even before the
attempted coup in July, information was swirling in various
parts of the Turkish press about competition among the
numerous other clandestine groups and religious orders
allegedly vying for power and entry points into the state
bureaucracy as the Gülenists were being weakened and
pushed out. Mehmet Yilmaz`s 22 December 2015 article in
Hürriyet, “The Ministry Where Tarikats Run Wild”, listed
the following groups as already competing for power—
not in the Diyanet, where one might suspect—but in the
Ministry of the Interior and the Police: Milli Damarcılar,
KÖZcüler, Okuyucular, Yazıcılar, Süleymancılar, Milli
14
Religion, the State, and the Party
Görüşçüler, Hak Yolcular, Menzilciler, Kırkıncı Hocacılar.16
Similarly, according to an interview with several former,
self-proclaimed Kemalist police chiefs that were forcibly
sent into retirement by the government last year, the
vacuum within the national police (Emniyet) was filled by
the members of other religious orders and brotherhoods,
including some offshoots of the Nur movement,
Menzilciler, Yazıcılar and KÖZcüler. The police chiefs
claimed that “Only the name of the given cemaat now
occupying the police force has changed, nothing else.”17
up government positions without public competition
is closely related to favoritism. From now on, we are
no longer going to allow this type of monopolization.
For however many cemaats and tarikats there are
remaining, they’ll take ÖYSM’s exam and will be
required to fulfill the necessary requirements. We will
then put them in appropriate positions as we see fit. 18
All kidding aside, the sardonic article from Zaytung begs
the question of what is next for the Turkish state and its
relationship with religion, especially unofficial religious
orders. My hunch is that Zaytung’s humor may contain
a grain of truth about how the Turkish state might pivot
with respect to such organizations. The Diyanet is now
clearly politicized. In a next step, perhaps something like
Zaytung’s fictional Cemaat Assessment and Placement
Center (CÖYM) will be made a reality, lest history repeat
itself yet again in Turkey.
A second potential outcome is a sharp and prolonged
increase in state regulation focused on the intersection of
religious orders and bureaucratic appointments. Shortly
after the failure of the July 15th coup, the online magazine
Zaytung, which is popular with Turkish young adults and
known for its tongue-in-cheek style, ran a piece parodying
the upheaval in the Turkish bureaucracy that suggested
just this. Using deadpan humor, the mock-article entitled
“September 1 Deadline Announced for those Cemaat
Members Seeking to Submit Applications for State
Positions” reported that because of a coup attempt by the
“cemaat that had spent the last 30 years infiltrating various
civil service positions with the help of the ruling party...
the government was now compelled to be more sensitive
to other religious groups.” According the article, the civil
service positions emptied after the failed coup would be
refilled in a balanced way by drawing from other religious
orders through an exam administered by the official
Measurement, Selection and Placement Center (ÖSYM/
Ölçme, Seçme ve Yerleştirme Merkezi). A new Cemaat
Assessment and Placement Center (CÖYM) also would be
set up by the state “to objectively administer examinations
for members of religious orders interested in joining the
bureaucracy.” The article further joked that a quota system
would be used to divvy up state positions amongst the
various religious orders and included the following madeup statement by a Deputy Prime Minister:
(Endnotes)
1 Fabbe, Kristin. “Turkey’s Secularization in Reverse?”
In Rethinking Nation and Nationalism. No. 14, 17–19.
POMEPS Studies. Washington, D.C.: Project on Middle
East Political Science, 2015.
2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/
wp/2016/07/19/why-there-are-so-many-conspiracytheories-about-the-turkish-coup/
3 For such claims see: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/
articles/turkey/2015-05-17/turkey-casts-diyanet
4 http://www.ntv.com.tr/turkiye/diyanet-isleribaskani-gormez-feto-3-acigimizi-kullandi,F62IjE8_
IEGxtwX9U6RnfQ
5 http://www.haberturk.com/gundem/haber/1268837diyanet-isleri-baskanligi-oldurulen-darbecilere-dinhizmeti-verilmeyecektir
There is nothing to be alarmed about friends. In the
state, continuity is essential. Turkey has a religious
tradition of easily being able to fill its state ranks.
Based on the government’s recent woes, though, we
have found that having a single cemaat able to take-
6 http://ankara.diyanet.gov.tr/Sayfalar/contentdetail.aspx?
ContentId=295&MenuCategory=Kurumsal
15
7 http://ankara.diyanet.gov.tr/Sayfalar/contentdetail.aspx?
ContentId=300&MenuCategory=Kurumsal
13 http://www.cnnturk.com/turkiye/din-surasindan-20maddelik-sonuc-bildirisi
8 http://aksaray.diyanet.gov.tr/Sayfalar/contentdetail.aspx?
ContentId=270&MenuCategory=Kurumsal
14 Ibid.
15 http://www.ntv.com.tr/turkiye/diyanet-isleribaskani-gormez-feto-3-acigimizi-kullandi,F62IjE8_
IEGxtwX9U6RnfQ
9 http://webdosyasp.diyanet.gov.tr/UserFiles/aksaray/
UserFiles/Files/M%C3%BCmin ve Emanet Bilinci_
ad7b5354-360f-4549-a938-9bba482f7bcd.pdf
16 http://sosyal.hurriyet.com.tr/yazar/mehmet-yyilmaz_148/tarikatlarin-cirit-attigi-bakanlik_40030041
10 For a recording of the event and speech see: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5xMF18SHdU
11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzsNl_1N4rs
17 http://www.sozcu.com.tr/2016/gundem/fetoculerdenbosalan-yeri-diger-tarikatlar-aliyor-1368768/
12 http://www.milliyet.com.tr/erdogan-pensilvanya-dakisarlatani-siyaset-2288810/
18 http://www.zaytung.com/haberdetay.
asp?newsid=309653
Good things don’t last forever:
Arab uprisings and the Turkish model
By Ekrem Karakoc, Binghamton University (SUNY)
In the aftermath of the Arab uprisings, many policymakers
and scholars, from leading American commentators to
political elites in the MENA region, pointed to Turkey as
a political model for transitioning countries. This debate
produced a number of studies examining different aspects
of the Turkish model, ranging from domestic politics and
foreign policy activism under the AKP to public opinion
regarding Turkey and Turkish foreign policy in the Middle
East (Altunisik, 2005; Göksel, 2014; Kaddorah, 2010;
Kubicek, 2013; Özcan, Köse, & Karakoç, 2015; Perekli,
2012; Tol, 2012; Tuğal, 2016).
newly independent Turkic states in Central Asia, these
discussions have not survived long, and proponents have
lost their previous enthusiasm. Several explanations
have been offered for the decline of Turkey’s appeal in
the region. First, the Arab uprisings have failed to bring
about the desired political and economic developments.
Second, Turkey has also been perceived as an ineffective
actor in pushing for democratic and peaceful solutions
in the region, whether in Egypt, Libya or Syria. Third, the
growing ethnic and sectarian tensions in the country, the
stagnation of its economy, the curbing of political liberties,
especially since the Gezi Park protests and the criticism of
its increasing authoritarianism and the constant portrayal
of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as an authoritarian leader in the
However, not unlike previous discussions of the
Turkish model in the 1990s in regard to the then-
16
Religion, the State, and the Party
international media have led to increasing criticism of the
Turkish model (Taşpınar, 2014; Tuğal, 2016).
asserted that it is Turkey’s economic performance that is
most appealing to the people of the region. Taking these
different factors into account, Ennis and Momani (2013,
p. 1130) argue that the Turkish model has caused Arab
perceptions of Turkey to shift from seeing it as a “military
state,” with negative imperial legacies, to a “trading state,” a
modern regional hub of economic productivity. Or could it
be that, as some argue, the Turkish model only appeals to
supporters of political Islam?
These explanations account for why the Turkish model
has lost its earlier appeal, but they do not explain the
persistence of substantial support for it in some countries.
While positive assessments of the Turkish model have
declined precipitously in Turkish and international media,
this study argues that the decline in popularity of this
model has not been uniform in the Arab streets, with
variations across the MENA region. As we show with our
public-opinion survey in Tunisia, perception of Turkey has
remained largely positive despite Turkey’s continued move
toward authoritarianism. Turkish popularity in the region
has been less affected by domestic developments in part
because, relative to the monarchies, military regimes and
single-party regimes that do not even allow free elections,
the Turkish political system may still be more appealing to
the people in the region.
Using original surveys in Lebanon and Tunisia, this study
demonstrates that support for the Turkish model has been
particularistic. In Lebanon, the Turkish model has little
support beyond Sunni Muslims, whereas it has almost no
support among Shia and low support among Christians
and Druze. In Tunisia, it finds substantial support among
secular Tunisians as well as Ennahda supporters. Our
surveys show a near consensus in both countries regarding
Turkey’s strong economy, while views differ regarding its
secular and democratic nature. We also show that citizens
of both countries are highly critical of Turkey’s policy
regarding the Syrian conflict, while its policy toward Israel
receives relatively substantial support in Tunisia.
In addition, the existence of some positive perceptions of
Turkey as a model country should not be surprising, as the
economic, political, and social demands (bread, freedom
and human dignity) of the Arab uprisings, persist in these
countries, with no prospect of improvement in the short
term. In contrast to Tunisia, the Turkish model does not
inspire most of the population in Lebanon. We argue that
the ramifications of the Syrian Civil War, especially the
impact of the refugee crisis, on domestic Lebanese politics
has significantly reduced support for the Turkish model
despite the relatively high evaluation of its economic and
political systems.
Support for the Turkish Model in Tunisia and Lebanon
We conducted original public-opinion surveys in Tunisia
and Lebanon in November 2014 and October 2015,
respectively. These two countries provide significant
variation in our main variable of interest, but they also
reflect ethnic and religious variation in the region.
In addition, both countries have been politically and
economically affected by political developments
surrounding the Arab Uprisings. In particular, Libyan
refugees and terror attacks in Tunisia and Syrian refugees
in Lebanon remain important political and economic
concerns, increasing anxiety regarding the political
and economic stability of both countries. Finally, both
countries have unfinished democratic transitions and
relatively open societies that reduce problems concerning
running a public opinion survey in the region.
Regardless of the drop and variation in support for
the Turkish model across the region, an important
question remains unanswered: To what extent has the
Turkish model been received positively, and why did
it appeal to people in the Arab Middle East in the first
place? As potential explanations, some have pointed to
the democratic nature of Turkey as a Muslim-majority
country, while others have noted that the secular character
of the Turkish political system in a relatively religious
country serves as a model for these countries. Others have
Our first survey was conducted in Tunisia, right after its
17
parliamentary election on October 26, 2014. The faceto-face interviews were completed between November 2
and 21, 2014, with a sample of 1,500 adults over the age
of 18. Stratified random sampling was adopted to collect
data in a country where economic inequalities, as well as
urban-rural differences across regions, are substantial.
The face-to-face interviews in Lebanon were conducted
between October 2 and 26, 2015 with a nationally
representative sample of 1,200 adults over the age of 18,
using the Probability Proportional to Size (PPS) sampling
technique.
positively while 16 percent report a negative assessment.
Lebanon, on the other hand, offers almost the opposite
picture. About 22 percent there view the Turkish model
positively , while 64 percent hold a negative view of Turkish
model. Looking at the other three countries helps situate
these reactions. We find that 62 percent of Tunisians and
46 percent of Lebanese in our survey positively assessed
the French model, while 26 percent of Lebanese and 50
percent of Tunisians preferred the American model, and
only 22 percent in Lebanon and 26 percent in Tunisia
positively viewed the Saudi model.
To determine the level of positive attitudes toward
Turkey, we asked Tunisian and Lebanese respondents
two questions, but here we will present only one, as both
yield similar findings: “Following the political changes
during and after the Arab Uprisings, most people have
offered various countries that Middle Eastern countries
might consider as models to emulate. Please tell me how
positively you would consider the following countries as
models for Middle Eastern countries. Please respond on
a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to ‘Not positive at
all’ and 5 corresponds to ‘Very positive’. ”1 We also asked
people’s attitudes toward three other countries to compare
with Turkey..
What factors underlie this disparity? To understand the
answer to this question, we have to understand how these
views vary across political and sectarian identities in these
countries and how the Turkish political and economic
system has been perceived by the populations of these
countries.
Political and Sectarian Cleavages and the Turkish
Model
When we disaggregate attitudes regarding the Turkish
model by domestic political and sectarian groups, we see
considerable variation in attitudes, especially in Lebanon,
where Sunnis significantly differ from other sectarian
groups as shown in Table 1. Fifty-eight percent of Sunnis
support the Turkish model, while only 27 percent of them
view it negatively. Only 3 percent of Shiites and 10 percent
of Maronites hold a positive view of the Turkish model.
Support for the Turkish model is a little higher among
Orthodox Lebanese, Druze and Catholics – 11 percent,
19 percent and 21 percent, respectively. The negative
perception of the Turkish model is spectacularly high
among non-Sunni groups. Eighty-one percent of Shiites,
78 percent of Maronites, 84 percent of Eastern Orthodox,
71 percent of Catholics and 65 percent of Druze reject the
Turkish model.
Figure 1 demonstrates how people of Tunisia and Lebanon
have different perceptions of the Turkish model. In Tunisia,
57 percent of respondents assess the Turkish model
1
18
Religion, the State, and the Party
Perceptions of Turkey
In Tunisia, Table 2 suggests that the secular versus religious
cleavage is substantial in shaping people’s attitudes, but
not to the degree observed in Lebanon. Among the more
religious Ennahda voters, 72 percent hold a positive
attitude toward Turkey, but 57 percent among the more
secular Nidaa Tounes party do so. The difference in
negative attitudes regarding the model is also less marked,
with 22 percent among Nidaa voters and 8 percent among
Ennahda voters holding a negative attitude.
We have presented empirical evidence for the level of
positive attitudes regarding the Turkish model, but doesn’t
answer why people consider Turkey a model country. We
asked the respondents the following questions: “Please tell
me to what extent you agree with the following statements
about Turkey. Please respond on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1
corresponds to ‘I strongly disagree’ and 5 corresponds to ‘I
strongly agree’: Turkey has a democratic political system;
Turkey has a good economy; Turkey has a secular political
system; Turkey is a close ally of the West.” These variables
are recoded as follows: 1 disagree, 2 somewhat agree and 3
agree.
The positive evaluation of the Turkish model by Ennahda
supporters should not be surprising. The Ennahda
leadership endorsed and even stated that they embraced
the Turkish model as a role model for the country
during their electoral campaign in the 2011 election,
but then went silence as criticism toward the Turkish
model increased in the West and the region. However,
since 2013 the party’s leader, Rached Ghannushi, and
others have been reluctant to express any criticism of
the Turkish model. It is true that Turkey is more popular
among Ennahda supporters, but support among secularist
parties should not be underestimated. More than half
of secularist-party supporters view the Turkish model
positively. Goksel (2015) reports that secularist leaders
view Turkey as a country in which Islamists and secularists
come together and engage in politics. In addition, the
Turkish model emerges as a potential example among
secularist parties of the coexistence of an Islamist party
with the West that Tunisia can embrace.
Tunisians and Lebanese have a similar view of the Turkish
economy and its secular political system. Eighty-two
percent of Tunisians and 79 percent of Lebanese agree
that Turkey has a healthy economy. Around 42 percent of
Tunisians and 47 percent of Lebanese agree that Turkey
has a secular political system, but 15 percent of the former
and 28 percent of the latter disagree.
How do people in the two countries view the Turkish
political system? Fifty-four percent of Tunisians and 37
percent of Lebanese agree that Turkey has a democratic
political system, while 15 percent of Tunisians and 40
percent of Lebanese disagree. The findings above suggest
that Tunisians overwhelmingly consider Turkey to be
democratic, while Lebanese are divided on the issue.
19
68, 69 and 73 percent among Maronites, Orthodox and
Catholics, respectively. Interestingly, Druze agrees with
this claim more than any other group, with 93 percent.
In Tunisia, we find that political identities have less impact
on the perception of Turkish democracy and economic
performance. Supporters of all three parties agree with the
statement that Turkey has a good economy. Eighty-three
percent of Nidaa and 87 percent of Ennahda supporters
affirm this statement. Fifty-one percent of Nidaa and 47
percent of Ennahda supporters agree that Turkey is a close
ally of the West. A slightly higher number of non-Islamistparty supporters agree, 54 percent.
Another significant divergence emerges regarding whether
Turkey is a close ally of the West. Seventy-seven percent
of Lebanese agree with the statement and only 9 percent
disagree. Interestingly, only 46 percent of Tunisians see
Turkey a close ally of the West, and 18 percent think the
opposite. Except for the question regarding the Turkish
economy, we observe a significant variation within and
across both countries regarding the perception of the
Turkish political system and its relations with the West.
In order further to study this, we disaggregate these
perceptions by political and sectarian identity.
Regarding whether Turkey has a democratic political
system, Ennahda supporters exceed Nidaa supporters, 72
versus 51 percent. However, minorities of both groups
view the Turkish system as secular: 46 percent of Nidaa
voters and 48 percent of Ennahda voters view Turkey as
a secular regime. As for non-Islamist-party voters, 53
percent of them view Turkey as a democratic country, and
39 percent of them as a secular regime.
Attitudes regarding Turkish Foreign Policy on the
Israeli-Arab and Syrian Conflicts
Perception of Turkey and Identities
In Lebanon, we found a significant divergence across
sectarian groups in views about Turkey. Sixty-one percent
of Sunnis, but only 34 percent of Shiites, 21 percent
of Maronites, 19 percent of Orthodox, 29 percent of
Catholics and 33 percent of Druze believe that Turkey
has a democratic system. However, this substantial
difference in views between Sunnis and Shiites disappears
regarding the secular nature of the Turkish political
system: 56 percent of both groups agree that Turkey has a
secular system. The figures are around 35 percent among
Christian groups and 32 percent among Druze. As for
the economy question, 91 percent of Sunnis and Druze
believe that Turkey has a strong economy, but this declines
to 65 percent among Shiites, 78 among Maronites and
73 percent among Orthodox and Catholics. Eighty-one
percent of Sunnis and 85 percent of Shiites believe that
Turkey is a close ally of the West, but the figures are only
Turkey’s popularity is tied to its Israeli-Arab policy (Dal &
Erşen, 2014), while its decline is associated with Turkish
foreign policy on the Syrian conflict. However, we do
not have any empirical evidence for either assertion in
the literature, to the best of our knowledge. To see how
Turkish foreign policy on these two issues is assessed, we
asked about people’s attitudes regarding Turkish foreign
policy on these two conflicts. We asked them: “How would
you evaluate Turkish foreign policy toward the conflict
in Syria? Please respond on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1
corresponds to ‘Strongly negative’ and 5 corresponds to
‘Strongly positive’. And how would you evaluate Turkish
foreign policy on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Please
respond on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to
‘Strongly negative’ and 5 corresponds to ‘Strongly positive.’”
20
Religion, the State, and the Party
by Sunnis. Interestingly, despite the differences regarding
the Turkish model in the two countries, there are some
similarities and substantive positive attitudes regarding
Turkey’s political system and economic performance.
Tunisians and Lebanese with different political and
sectarian identities hold relatively similar positive attitudes
regarding Turkey’s economy and relationship with the
West. Even though a substantial percentage of citizens of
both countries consider the Turkish political system to
be democratic and secular, there is not much enthusiasm
for Turkey in Lebanon, unlike in Tunisia. As well, we
find that support for Turkish foreign policy regarding
the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Syrian civil war is low
in both countries, with a significant variation in support
across Lebanese sectarian groups, but less variation across
Tunisian political groups.
If the findings hold in other MENA countries, we would
expect support for the Turkish model to be low or only
exist among political Islamist or Sunni groups in countries
with Shia-dominated regimes. Indeed, our research on
Iran and Masoud et al.’s (2015) findings on Egypt provide
empirical evidence for the findings here. This research
also suggests that citizens of countries in the region or
supporters of Islamic parties may not be aware of Turkey’s
democratic deficiencies and repressive policies toward the
secular political opposition. This may be because civil and
political liberties are more restricted in their own countries
than in Turkey, because of their sympathy for the AKP as
an Islamist party, or because Islamist groups in particular
may consider the AKP a role model. Regardless of the
reason – which future studies may be able to determine
more precisely – this research shows that the region will
keep looking for political models in the future, and we
hope that the region finds a better model than Turkey
today.
A close comparison of Figures 2 and 3 shows that Turkey’s
Israeli-Arab policy finds more support in Tunisia than
in Lebanon. Thirty-eight percent of Tunisians support
Turkish foreign policy regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict,
whereas only 16 percent of Lebanese do so. As expected,
both publics are very critical of Turkish policy regarding
the Syrian civil war, which receives similarly low positive
scores in both countries, only 20 percent in Lebanon
and 22 percent in Tunisia. The negative assessment of
Turkish policy regarding the Syrian conflict is dominant in
both countries: 70 percent in Lebanon and 64 percent in
Tunisia.
Conclusion
This research shows that, despite Turkey’s move away from
democracy, positive attitudes toward Turkey persist in
Tunisia, where the Turkish model is regarded highly only
21
Reference List
Kubicek, P. (2013). Debating the Merits of the” Turkish
Model” for Democratization in the Middle East.
Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations,
12(3).
Altunisik, M. B. (2005). The Turkish model and
democratization in the Middle East. Arab Studies
Quarterly, 45-63.
Özcan, M., Köse, T., & Karakoç, E. (2015). Assessments of
Turkish Foreign Policy in the Middle East During the Arab
Uprisings. Turkish Studies, 16(2), 195-218.
Dal, E. P., & Erşen, E. (2014). Reassessing the “Turkish
Model” in the Post-Cold War Era: A Role Theory
Perspective. Turkish Studies, 15(2), 258-282.
Perekli, F. (2012). The Applicability of the “Turkish Model”
to Morocco: The Case of the Parti de la Justice et du
Développement (PJD). Insight Turkey, 14(3), 85-108.
Ennis, C. A., & Momani, B. (2013). Shaping the Middle
East in the Midst of the Arab Uprisings: Turkish and Saudi
foreign policy strategies. Third World Quarterly, 34(6),
1127-1144.
Taşpınar, Ö. (2014). The end of the Turkish model.
Survival, 56(2), 49-64.
Göksel, O. (2014). Perceptions of the Turkish Model in
Post-Revolutionary Tunisia. Turkish Studies, 15(3), 476495.
Tol, G. (2012). The” Turkish Model” in the Middle East.
Current History, 111(749), 350.
Kaddorah, E. Y. (2010). The Turkish model: Acceptability
and apprehension. Insight Turkey, 12(4), 113.
Tuğal, C. (2016). The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the
Arab Uprisings Brought Down Islamic Liberalism. London:
Verso Books.
22
Identity politics
23
Piety, Intimacy, and Emotions:
Political Symbolism of the AKP Government
By Senem Aslan, Bates College
In August 2013, then-prime minister of Turkey Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan began to cry during a live television
broadcast as a letter written by the Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood politician Mohammed el-Baltagy was being
read. The dramatic letter was addressed to el-Baltagy’s
deceased daughter killed by Egyptian security forces
during the violent protests against the military coup that
ousted the Muslim Brotherhood from power. The cameras
zoomed in on Erdoğan for several minutes as he cried.
When the moderator asked what made him so emotional,
Erdoğan stated that the poem made him think about his
own children who could not see their father adequately
while growing up because he was working so hard for his
political cause. He added that he was moved by el-Baltagy’s
maturity in approaching life after death and his daughter’s
martyrdom.1
attending a funeral for his former campaign manager and
others who were killed in the violence during the failed
coup attempt in July 2016. He had to cut his speech short
because he was too emotional.8 He has also provoked
his audience to cry with his emotional speeches. While
speaking at a conference, he brought many to tears when
he asked for soil to be taken from the grave of an Ottoman
soldier in Myanmar’s Arakan to be put in his grave.9
Other prominent members of the AKP have also cried in
public several times. In a 2015 election campaign video,
party leader and former prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu
could be seen in tears hugging a Palestinian man in Gaza.10
At an inauguration ceremony, AKP politician Bülent Arınç
could not contain his tears while giving a speech that also
made Davutoğlu cry.11 Melih Gökçek, Abdullah Gül, Ali
Babacan, and Abdülkadir Aksu were among other AKP
politicians who cried at different public occasions.12
This was not the first or the last time Erdoğan appeared
emotional on TV. Contradicting the typical image of
a tough authoritarian strongman, Erdoğan has been
seen crying many times in public. In 2007, he cried at
the parliament while listening to a poem by Mehmet
Akif Ersoy, an Islamist-nationalist poet who wrote the
Turkish national anthem.2 In 2009, he cried during an
interview on TV while reciting a nationalist poem.3 In
2010, he could not hold his tears back at the Justice and
Development Party’s (AKP) group meeting while talking
about executions by the military after the 1980 coup.4 Such
emotional displays became more pronounced, finding
more publicity in the media after the Gezi protests. In
2014, the AKP’s election campaign song filled his eyes
with tears.5 In 2015 he cried with his wife in Albania as
they listened to a poem by a student during a mosque’s
inauguration ceremony.6 The cameras zoomed in on
Erdoğan’s eyes once more when brimmed with tears
listening to a student reciting a poem during the opening
ceremony of the Diyanet Center of America in Maryland in
April 2016.7 Recently, Erdoğan broke down in tears while
Erdoğan’s propensity to tears in public does not easily
conform to his tough, masculine, and relentless posturing.
Statesmen and politicians’ crying in public is also
unprecedented in Turkish political history. In addition,
such expressions of vulnerability contradict AKP’s
assertions of power through grandiose political spectacles.
Particularly after the Gezi Protests, as the government
drifted more towards authoritarianism and encountered
significant opposition to its rule, its official iconography
and ceremonies became more daring, provocative, and
spectacular. At grandiose opening ceremonies of public
works and massive rallies marked by special audiovisual effects, the AKP remobilized its electoral base,
reaffirming solidarity with Erdoğan. These venues also
asserted authority and communicated the extent of the
government’s power to the opposition. So how can we
make sense of such public displays of emotionality by
Erdoğan and other leaders of the AKP?
24
Identity politics
Crying as an important part of Islamist imagery
official national days that are associated with Turkey’s
secular Republican history and promoted alternative days
of commemoration that celebrate Turkey’s Ottoman and
Islamic heritage like the conquest of Istanbul and the birth
of Prophet Muhammed (the Holy Birth Week).
A sign of devotion to God and innocence, crying
is important to Islamists across the globe. It also
communicates the message of Muslim victimhood and
suffering. Thomas Hegghammer (2015: 8-9) writes how
weeping is socially appreciated among jihadis and that
communal weeping is an integral part of the jihadi culture
like poetry, music, and dream interpretation. According
to Hegghammer (2015: 10), one needs to understand the
emotional appeal of the cultural practices of jihadism to
understand why people are attracted to it. In Turkey, too,
the image of crying has been integral to Islamist visual
imagery. “Various photographs, illustrations, and drawings
of pain and tears, mostly of children, circulate through a
wide range of Islamic media, from television to print media
to the Internet,” writes Özlem Savaş (2013: 111). Fethullah
Gülen, Erdoğan’s most prominent Islamist opponent,
is well known for crying while delivering his sermons,
inducing mass weeping in the audience. Esra Özyürek
(1997) suggests that crying communicates powerlessness
and sincerity in face of God. For Gülenists, crying
symbolizes purity, compassion, innocence, and awareness
of injustices in today’s world (Savaş 2013: 115).
Crying is part of this Islamist symbolic repertoire, signaling
Muslim solidarity and empathy. By crying for the suffering
of fellow political Islamists abroad or the injustices he
suffered during his political career, Erdoğan connects
himself to the larger Islamist movement in the Middle East
and calls attention to the threats Islamists continue to face.
The campaign song that filled Erdoğan’s eyes with tears
praised him as “the feared nightmare of the oppressor,”
“loud voice of the oppressed,” and “the light of hope of the
millions.” The poem that triggered an emotional response
from Erdoğan and his wife in Albania reads like a prayer,
begging God not to allow the country to be taken over
by non-Muslims.14 Crying communicates vulnerability
and reminds the AKP constituency of the importance
of devotion to the cause and persistence in the face of
continuing threats and challenges. It helps make AKP
support a “felt identity” (Berezin 2001: 86).
Populist leaders and public emotion
Muslim victimhood and suffering due to injustices at the
hands of the enemy – whether Kemalists, Westerners,
secularists, Israelis, or the military – are also central
themes in the AKP’s rhetoric. The AKP government
stands out in Turkish political history in its heavy use of
Islamist symbolism during its tenure, initiating significant
changes in the official symbolic repertoire. It moved away
from expressions of staunch secularism, making religious
symbols more visible in public space. For example, official
ceremonies began to include prayers led by the head of
the Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) and Quran
recitations. In some venues, it is President Erdoğan himself
who recites verses from the Quran.13 The government
reordered the rules of state protocol, curbing the public
profile of the military and moving up the position of the
Religious Affairs Directorate in the official hierarchy. It
also incorporated Ottoman and Islamic imagery into the
state’s symbolic repertoire. For example, it scaled down
Public crying also relates to populism. The AKP came to
power with a strong anti-elitist discourse, emphasizing the
victimhood of the majority at the hands of a repressive,
secular, and Western-oriented minority. The party presents
itself as the representative of the real “national will”
and the people on the street. In his speeches Erdoğan
frequently brought up the discrimination and humiliation
that people from lower-income, conservative groups
from rural backgrounds encountered (Koyuncu 2014:
157-173). “In this country there are White Turks as well
as Black Turks. Your brother Tayyip belongs to the Black
Turks,” he stated.15 In another speech he said, “We know
very well what exclusion means due to someone’s belief,
exercise of religion, and scarf on her head. We know what
poverty is… We are the children of this land.” (Koyuncu
2014: 165). He boasted of working hard, selling lemonade
on the street, coming from a pious and modest family, and
25
attending a religious school (Türk 2014). Other leaders of
the AKP have also frequently signaled their piety, previous
lower-class status, and closeness to the public through
the ways they speak, dress, and act. As does the increased
emphasis on Islam and piety, crying in public connects
the ruler and the ruled because it communicates intimacy,
approachability, and equality with fellow citizens.
expressions of rage and vengefulness, conspiratorial
language, and heavy-handed assertions of power over
the opposition. Crying not only suggests vulnerability, it
also points to the perpetrators of injustice and suffering17
and highlights the necessity to defend oneself against
opponents. As Erdoğan frequently declares in his speeches,
“We won’t turn the other cheek to those who slap us.”18
In one instance, Erdoğan’s crying was triggered by a
sentimental poem titled “Farewell Mother,” recited on stage
by İbrahim Sadri, a poet and an artist popular particularly
among Turkey’s conservatives.16 After finishing the poem,
Sadri gave a short speech emphasizing Erdoğan’s loyalty to
his friends, saying that Erdoğan never left him alone during
difficult times when he lost his mother and his brother. Such
instances of emotionality foster the image of a compassionate
and authentic leader. After crying over el-Baltagy’s farewell
letter to his deceased daughter, Erdoğan underlined that he
spoke not as the prime minister but as an ordinary citizen.
It is not a coincidence that the pro-AKP media covered
Erdoğan’s public crying more frequently particularly after the
Gezi Protests when sustaining the credibility of a populist
discourse as he consolidated authoritarian rule has become
increasingly challenging. The image of emotionality helps
legitimize Erdoğan’s populist discourse at a time when his
growing political power and economic wealth increasingly
set him apart from the politically and economically
marginalized he claims to represent.
The symbolic practices of the AKP government have mixed
consequences. On the one hand, it is crucial to understand
the emotional dynamic that this movement created among
its supporters through rhetoric and symbolism. AKP’s
electoral success and its ability to mobilize the masses
cannot be understood without its emotional appeal. On the
other hand, far from legitimizing the AKP’s rule broadly,
this symbolism has divided society further, hardening
political and cultural identities and escalating political
tension. Symbolic practices of the AKP government,
including Erdoğan’s and other AKP leaders’ public crying,
has been severely criticized and mocked by the opposition.
Symbolic expressions can exacerbate conflict when they
emphasize exclusion, incompatible values, outside threats,
a sense of victimization, and revenge (Ross 2007). The
AKP’s symbolism has provoked increased politicization
of the society by evoking strong and conflicting emotions
among its supporters and opponents. The result is a highly
polarized and emotionally charged society, presenting ample
opportunities for further political unrest and civil strife.
The ambiguity of public crying
(Endnotes)
The public appearance of vulnerability and fragile
emotionality are closely linked to grandiose spectacles of
power and assertions of omnipresence by Erdoğan and the
AKP. As Fethi Açıkel suggests, the emphasis on suffering,
victimhood, and vulnerability is an ambivalent political
discourse. While it expresses a need for compassion and
affection, it also communicates a desire for more power
and revenge (Savaş 2013: 117-118). This dichotomy has
been apparent in Erdoğan’s discourse after Gezi, as he
more frequently expresses vulnerability through crying
but also appears aggressive and defiant in public, using
1 The video with English translation can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOIF0eLb73I
2 http://www.ensonhaber.com/gundem/35662/basbakanmecliste-agladi.html
3 http://www.mynet.com/tv/basbakan-sarki-soyledi-siirokudu-agladi-vid-2689310/
4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBZcG5IV6EI
26
Identity politics
5 http://t24.com.tr/haber/akpnin-secim-sarkisierdoganin-gozlerini-doldurdu,251491
14 The full translation can be found at: http://www.
hurriyetdailynews.com/video-poetic-prayer-makeserdogan-couple-shed-tears-in-albania.aspx?PageID=23
8&NID=82390&NewsCatID=510. Erdoğan cried at the
same poem in 2016 during the commemoration ceremony
of the Turkish victory at the Gallipoli campaign in World
War I: http://www.ahaber.com.tr/gundem/2016/03/18/
imam-hatip-ogrencisinin-dua-siiri-erdogani-aglatti.
He recited the same poem in a television commercial
prepared for the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli
campaign. The commercial can be watched at: http://
www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-president-erdogansgallipoli-prayer-stirs-debate.aspx?pageID=238&nID=8135
0&NewsCatID=338.
6 http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/video-poeticprayer-makes-erdogan-couple-shed-tears-in-albania.aspx?
PageID=238&NID=82390&NewsCatID=510
7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-bujHl8zcI
8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YKc1AM2PEs
9 See http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/erdoganreveals-last-will-moves-everyone-to-tears.aspx?PageID=
238&NID=83280&NewsCatID=338. For another example
see, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujTsrKtOBx8.
15 http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12484/whiteturks-black-turks-and-negroes_the-politics-o
10 The video can be watched at: https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=WVsZiDphrDE
16 Sadri’s performance and Erdoğan’s response
can be watched at: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=C35Otcn4UsA
11 http://www.sabah.com.tr/gundem/2014/11/07/bulentarinc-hem-agladi-hem-de-aglatti
12 For a few examples see, http://www.cnnturk.com/
haber/turkiye/bulent-arinc-konusurken-duygulandidavutoglu-agladi, http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/
gundem/26719543.asp, https://www.avrupagazete.
com/turkiye/199655-basbakan-ahmet-davutoglu-oolay-karsisinda-agladi.html, https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=pgc0z7XLPkk, https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=d1WNV30rr4g, http://www.hurriyet.
com.tr/cumhurbaskani-erdogan-ve-basbakanyildirim-agladi-40175845, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=E04PkVcq_FE, http://t24.com.tr/haber/
bakanlar-kurulunun-veda-toplantisinda-bazi-bakanlaragladi,268832.
17 I thank Ekrem Karakoç for calling my attention to this
point.
18 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrantsturkey-eu-idUSKCN0XL0L6
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Berezin, Mabel. 2001. “Emotions and Political Identity:
Mobilizing Affection for the Polity.” In Passionate Politics:
Emotions and Social Movements, edited by Jeff Goodwin,
James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, 83-98. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
13 For example, he recited the Quran during the
inauguration ceremony of the mosque in Maryland,
funded by Diyanet. See, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=IZtNYA8aAwM.
Hegghammer, Thomas. 2015. “Why Terrorists Weep:
The Socio-Cultural Practices of Jihadi Militants. Paul
Wilkinson Memorial Lecture, University of St. Andrews,
16 April. Available at: http://hegghammer.com/_files/
Hegghammer_-_Wilkinson_Memorial_Lecture.pdf
27
Koyuncu, Büke. 2014. “Benim Milletim…” Ak Parti İktidarı,
Din ve Ulusal Kimlik. Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları.
Savaş, Özlem. 2013. “The Muslim “Crying Boy” in Turkey:
Aestheticization and Politicization Suffering in Islamic
Imagination.” In Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East:
Rhetoric of the Image, edited by Christiane Gruber and
Sune Haugbolle, 103-126. Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press.
Özyürek, Esra. “Feeling Tells Better Than Language:
Emotional Expression and Gender Hierarchy in the
Sermons of Fethullah Gülen Hocaefendi.” New Perspectives
on Turkey 16: 41-51.
Türk, Bahadır. 2014. Muktedir: Türk Sağ Geleneği ve Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan. Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları.
Ross, Marc Howard. 2007. Cultural Contestation in Ethnic
Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Towards Erdogan and the East:
Conspiracies and public perception in post-coup Turkey
By Kimberly Guiler, The University of Texas at Austin
Following the abortive July 15 to16 military coup in Turkey,
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has embarked on a series
of massive and indiscriminate purges of the military, police,
judiciary, media, education sector and, most recently, the
Kurdish opposition. Less discussed, however, has been the
Erdogan government’s use of conspiratorial rhetoric to fan
the flames of anti-Western sentiment and increase popular
support for Erdogan’s post-coup strongman initiatives.
These rhetorical strategies have set the stage for Erdogan
to consolidate power and have prepared the public for a
potential foreign policy shift toward to the East.
tactically supporting the bombing of the Grand National
Assembly of Turkey.
Turkey, which has been recently reinstated as the world’s
worst jailer of journalists, fosters an environment of media
self-censorship where the government can easily control
public discourse. In the wake of the aborted coup, one
hundred media outlets critical of the government have
been closed, 42 journalists have been placed in provisional
detention, and many other reporters have been banned
from travelling abroad. Just last month, Turkish authorities
dissolved 15 Kurdish media outlets and detained the
editor and several prominent journalists of Cumhuriyet,
one of the country’s most respected and last remaining
opposition newspapers.
Criminalizing the West
During the days following the failed coup, President
Erdogan accused the West of “supporting terrorism
and taking sides with coups.” Turkish Interior
Minister Süleyman Soylu, a close Erdogan associate
who was Turkey’s Labor Minister at the time, stated in a
televised interview that, “America is behind the coup.” The
Turkish media went further, directly accusing the United
States of trying to assassinate President Erdogan and
Conspiracy theories and Turkish politics
Conspiracy theories are not new to Turkish politics. Since
the 1960s, whenever Turkey’s generals have intervened
in politics, the country has accused the United States and
other outsiders of playing a behind-the-scenes role. Still,
28
Identity politics
the Turkish government’s present engagement with antiWestern conspiracy theories is puzzling for two reasons.
time in prison for their political cause. Furthermore, in
a Monkey Cage article written immediately after the
2016 failed coup, Kristin Fabbe and I suggested that the
Erdogan government was actively deploying conspiracy
theories that victimized Erdogan and blamed outsiders to
encourage national unity.
First, this discourse positions the Erdogan government in
opposition to its Western allies at a time when support
from friends abroad seems critical. Political instability in
Turkey has put new stress on a country already coping with
challenges from the rising threat of Islamist State forces,
the nearby Syrian war, a domestic Kurdish insurgency, and
a growing refugee crisis. Why would Turkey risk alienating
the European Union, its biggest trade partner, and the
United States, its ally in NATO and in the war against the
Islamic State?
Conspiracies and public opinion
Importantly, public opinion research suggests that
Erdogan’s repetitive dissemination of anti-outsider
conspiracy theories through his speeches and the media
may be both rational and strategic. According to John
Zaller (1992), citizens tend to follow elite cues when
making judgments about agency and causality in the
political world.1 Elite political cues can alter individuals’
political attitudes by selectively refocusing their attention
towards particular politicians or by impacting their
political judgments.2
Second, the post-coup conspiracy rhetoric positions
President Erdogan as the victim of an external
assassination attempt. This image of Erdogan as a fragile
victim strongly contradicts the ruthless, strong, and
masculine image he generally cultivates.
Why is the AKP government actively disseminating
rhetoric that criminalizes its allies and victimizes its leader,
Erdogan?
Political attitudes are most malleable when prevailing
conditions threaten people’s economic or personal
security and cause them to feel out of control.3 Specifically,
Whitson and Galinsky argue that individuals who feel they
lack control are more likely to harbor beliefs in conspiracy
theories.4 According to these authors, individuals can
overcome their lack of control by identifying illusory
patterns, or conspiracies, in order to make sense of
their environment. Elites can, then, take advantage of
anxiety-producing events where people lose their sense
of control by “fomenting suspicion and uncertainty
and then proffering solutions by identifying a source of
blame.”5 Following this logic, the bloody coup attempt
Several of the memos in this series suggest that the AKP
and Erdogan have historically positioned themselves as
political victims in order to gain sympathy and support
from voters. Senem Aslan describes how the party came to
power with a discourse that emphasized the “victimhood
of the majority at the hands of a repressive, secular, and
Western-oriented minority.” Esen Kirdis argues that
the AKP has defined itself as the representative of an
“oppressed majority” throughout its 14 years in power.
1 Zaller, John R. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Erdogan has cleverly drawn on gestures and rhetoric
to maintain his image as a political victim despite his
growing political power and economic wealth. Senem
Aslan argues, for instance, that Erdogan sustains his image
as a “man who has sacrificed a lot” through acts of public
crying. My dissertation, which draws on original surveys
with embedded experiments, also advances the notion
that voters in Turkey are more likely to feel positively
toward candidates, like Erdogan, who have suffered
2 Bartels, Larry M. 1996. “Uninformed votes: Information effects
in presidential elections.” American Journal of Political Science pp.
194–230.
3 Douglas, Tom. 1995. Scapegoats: Transferring Blame. New York:
Routledge.
4 Whitson, Jennifer A., and Adam D. Galinsky. 2008. Lacking Control
Increases Illusory Pattern Perception. Science 322 (5898):115–17.
5 Radnitz, S. and Underwood, P., 2015. Is belief in conspiracy theories
pathological? A survey experiment on the cognitive roots of extreme
suspicion. British Journal of Political Science, pp.1-17.
29
and subsequent environment of uncertainty in Turkey
presented a strategic opportunity for Erdogan to position
himself as the key victim of a national tragedy and to unite
the nation against a common source of blame: the West.
Despite overwhelming support for Erdogan and his recent
use of repressive tactics, Turkish citizens remain committed
to key principles of democracy. Among TCAS respondents,
only 35 percent agree that the president of the republic
should be more powerful than the parliament. Similarly,
only 28 percent say that a strong leader is preferable to a
democratic leader. Turkish citizens also remain hopeful
about Turkey’s future. Despite ongoing purges of the
military, police, judiciary, education system, media, civil
service sector and opposition, 53 percent of respondents say
that Turkey is better off after the failed coup.
To what extent, however, were Erdogan’s attempts
to influence public attitudes successful? Descriptive
statistics from the Turkey Coup Attitudes Survey (TCAS),
distributed by the author in collaboration with Matthew
Cebul and Sharan Grewal shortly after the attempted coup,
provide early evidence that an increase in pro-Erdogan and
anti-Western attitudes has begun to crystallize in postputsch Turkey. The survey was conducted with Turkish
citizens recruited through Facebook advertisements.
While the sample may not be representative of all Turks,
it reflects the overall voting ratio in public opinion: 50
percent of respondents say they supported the AKP in the
November 2015 elections, 25 percent say they supported
the Republican People’s Party (CHP), 12 percent say they
supported the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and
3 percent say they supported the pro-Kurdish People’s
Democratic Party (HDP).6
Survey results also indicate, however, that popular
support for the West-Turkey alliance may be among the
failed coup’s casualties. Turkish mistrust of Western
institutions – fueled by recent disputes with the United
States over strategies for combatting ISIS, disagreements
with the European Union over the migrant crisis, and the
weakening Turkey-NATO relationship – are crystalizing
in the aftermath of the putsch. Findings from the August
2016 TCAS can be contrasted with those from a July
2015 survey conducted by the German Marshall Fund.
Whereas a plurality (39 percent) of respondents in the
July 2015 German Marshall study said they preferred
cooperating with the West to other alternatives, only 4
percent of respondents said they favored cooperation with
Russia. Results from the TCAS about a year later and after
the coup, in contrast, show the opposite trend. Whereas
only 39 percent of TCAS respondents say they support a
continued relationship with the United States and only 50
percent support a continued relationship with NATO, an
overwhelming 77 percent support a strengthened alliance
with Russia.
Importantly, whereas 50 percent of respondents say they
supported Erdogan’s AKP in November of 2015, 54 percent
say they would support the party in elections today. This
increase of 4 percent is noteworthy given speculation
that the AKP will hold a referendum soon to push
through constitutional amendments creating an executive
presidency. Statements by pundits, Turkish politicians,
and voters suggest that a de-facto presidential system is
already in place in Turkey. Still others assert that officially
replacing the country’s parliamentary government with a
presidential one would further propel Turkey towards a
one-man dictatorship.
Additionally, an overwhelming 88 percent of TCAS
respondents report that they think the coup plotters
received help from abroad. This finding suggests that
Turkish citizens believe – or are at least claiming to believe
– the government’s framing of the coup attempt as an
attack that was supported by foreign (namely, Western)
elements. A poll cited in the Economist in August similarly
reported that 84 percent of respondents thought the
coup was supported by elements overseas and that 70
6 Actual vote returns for the November 2015 election are as follows:
AKP: 49.50%; CHP: 25.32%; MHP: 11.90%; and HDP: 10.76%. When
rounded to the nearest percent, the TCAS reported vote share for the
AKP, CHP, and MHP are identical to the actual returns (50%, 25%, and
12%, respectively). TCAS reported support for the pro-Kurdish HDP,
however, was notably much lower than the party’s actual vote share.
Respondents may have underreported their support for HDP given the
ongoing vilification of the pro-Kurdish party in the Turkish press in the
post-coup environment.
30
Identity politics
percent of Turks suspect that America played a role in
the aborted coup. When the pro-government Daily Sabah
asked Turks in a poll conducted on Twitter which U.S.
institution provided the largest amount of support to the
coup plotters, the vast majority of respondents (69 percent)
chose the CIA. Fewer respondents blamed the White
House (20 percent), Department of State (6 percent) and
FBI (5 percent).
It is too soon to know whether Turkey’s strained alliance
with the West will rebound or decay in the face of
mounting anti-Western skepticism fueled by conspiracies.
In the end, however, one thing is clear: Erdogan is using his
strategic leverage with the West and his hold over public
opinion in Turkey to strengthen his standing both at home
and abroad. In uniting diverse Turkish constituencies
against the Gulen Movement and its supposed Western
allies, Erdogan successfully primed the country for his
consolidation of power. To stand against the government
and its policies has become synonymous with supporting
the coup plotters. Given Turkey’s ongoing “state of
emergency” and the widespread purge of suspected coup
supporters, Erdogan is now uniquely positioned to push
through reforms that would further consolidate his control.
Erdogan’s Strategy
Taken as a whole, recent survey data and insights from
a budding literature on public opinion and conspiracy
theories lend support to the notion that Erdogan has been
deploying anti-Western rhetoric for a strategic purpose.
The bloody attempted coup enabled Erdogan to position
himself as the central victim of a tragic national event. It
also presented a rare political opportunity for Erdogan
to unite his co-victims – Turks from across the political
spectrum who opposed the coup – against a common
external enemy, the West. Turkish citizens, steeped
in collective memories of the economic, political, and
personal consequences of past military coups, were more
likely to accept Erdogan’s inflammatory accusations due to
the destabilizing post-coup environment. In the language
of Whitson and Galinsky, citizens who “lack control” in
the post-coup milieu are more prone to accept Erdogan’s
anti-Western conspiracies because these narratives provide
a framework, even if an illusory one, for understanding and
overcoming their political and psychological uncertainty.
As his popularity rises among an anxious and uncertain
Turkish citizenry, Erdogan continues to wield influence
over his constrained Western allies. Despite increasingly
authoritarian behavior and a recent pivot eastwards, the
US. government and Turkey’s other Western allies have yet
to hold the Erdogan government accountable. It remains
to be seen how long Erdogan will be able to simultaneously
maintain his leverage over the West and his popularity
back home. Recent survey and observational evidence,
however, indicates that Erdogan probably isn’t going
anywhere any time soon.
31
AKP’s Foreign Policy and Its Party Identity*
Esen Kirdiş, Rhodes College
The identity of the ruling Justice and Development Party
(Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP) has often been
defined by its foreign policy. In 2002, when the AKP first
took office, observers cited the new party’s support for the
EU as a sign of its transformation away from its Islamist
roots in the National Outlook Movement.1 Then, over the
next decade, the party was often criticized for its “Islamic”
identity due to its close engagement with the Middle East
and its support for the Arab Spring.2 And today, the party’s
foreign policy towards Syria has turned into a domestic
political issue. Although AKP’s foreign policy has not
directly influenced the voting behavior of the Turkish
electorate,3 it has influenced how the electorate perceives
the party’s identity, i.e. “the image that citizens have in
mind when they think about that party.”4
identity influenced the way in which voters view the party’s
political identity, and (4) the consequences of such party
identifications, for each term the party has been in office.
AKP’s First Term (2002-2007)
In 2002, when the AKP first took office, secular state
institutions and secular voters had many questions
about the party’s Islamist past in the National Outlook
Movement and its intentions for the secular (laicist)
character of the Turkish Republic. Indeed, it was only the
recent past, in the late 1990s, when AKP’s predecessors
in the Welfare Party of the National Outlook Movement
led a coalition government and advocated for the creation
of a Muslim G-8. At that time, Welfare Party leaders had
defined Turkey’s EU quest as “becoming the servant” of
the EU and as losing “the very essence of our identity.”9 In
this context, although the AKP had won elections, it still
needed to build trust among the secular state institutions
and secular voters and assure them that this was a
reformed party.
The foreign policy of a political party serves several
important roles in constructing party identity. First, it
signals to the electorate how the party perceives the
country and its place in world politics,5 showing the
electorate what the party will stand for in domestic politics.
Furthermore, a political party’s foreign policy tells voters
how it defines the state’s national identity and tells the
electorate what the purpose of the country is going to be
so that “they can feel proud of the nation’s (and therefore
their) image and standing.”6 Last but not least, a political
party’s foreign policy signals to the electorate who the
insiders and outsiders of their government are going to be,7
and in so doing tells the electorate who is part of a society
and who is not.8
During this first period in office, the AKP, in stark contrast
to its predecessors in the National Outlook Movement,
moved in the opposite direction in its foreign policy
and has promised to make “the Copenhagen criteria the
Ankara criteria” (Hürriyet, December 17, 2002). For this
end, the party passed multiple pro-EU reform packages
at a speed never before seen in Turkish politics. This
reorientation in foreign policy was not only a departure
from AKP’s Islamist predecessors but more importantly,
in line with secular Turkey’s historically Western-oriented
foreign policy identity.
To discuss the relationship between foreign policy and
party identity, this memo will briefly focus on (1) the
context in which the AKP has formulated its foreign
policy, (2) how the party has redefined Turkish foreign
policy identity, (3) how this reformulated foreign policy
Such a reorientation signaled reform in the AKP that was
moving through an “ideological moderation” process and
away “from a relatively closed and rigid worldview to one
more open and tolerant of alternative perspectives.”10 In
stark contrast to its forerunners in the National Outlook
*This memo is derived in part from an article published in Turkish
Studies, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/
14683849.2015.1044444
32
Identity politics
Movement, the AKP emphasized how it would prioritize
democratization and EU accession.11 Furthermore, such
a pro-EU reorientation in foreign policy told Turkish
voters that this new party’s priority in domestic politics
would be economic reform rather than Islamic revival.
Within this framework, the party capitalized on the public
perception that EU accession would be a catalyst for a
stable democracy and a better economy12 and emphasized
how EU membership would be a vehicle for economic
and structural reforms13 by appointing its then-Economy
Minister, Ali Babacan also as its chief EU negotiator. ThenForeign Affairs Minister Abdullah Gül explained Babacan’s
“double appointment” as a necessity given that “today
international financial institutions and Turkey’s relations
with the EU run parallel to each other” (Milliyet, May 24,
2005). Such a pro-EU foreign policy meant that the party
was now not only a reformed but also a pragmatic party
searching for solutions to problems at home through its
foreign policy prioritization.
role in Turkish politics, “Turkey has been able to formulate
a systematic and cohesive methodological approach to
world affairs because its political party has been able to
govern, resulting in real political stability at home.”17 In
short, the AKP aimed to consolidate its voter base at home
in the face of new challenges.
During this period, the party redefined traditional
Turkish foreign policy identity under then-Minister of
Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoğlu. He introduced the
“zero problems policy toward Turkey’s neighbors,”18
which situated Turkey as a central player in world
politics. Specifically, this new foreign policy reorientation
aimed not only to continue Turkey’s traditional Western
alliances but also to establish better relations with
Turkey’s southeastern neighbors in the Middle East and
northeastern neighbors in Caucasia (Russia). This new
foreign policy identity also emphasized Turkey’s unique
leadership position in the Middle East as a democracy in
a Muslim-majority country. This reorientation in foreign
policy was a departure from Turkey’s traditional defensive
and passive foreign policy in its active reengagement with
Turkey’s wider neighborhood.
By situating itself as a reformed and pragmatic party,
AKP “double[d] its support from those who did not
identify themselves as religious (from 15 to 39 percent).”14
Furthermore, such a pro-EU foreign policy was a winner
among both liberal and conservative constituents. While
pro-EU reforms meant liberal democratic reforms for
liberal constituents, it also meant protection of religious
rights from strict secularism (laicism) for conservative
constituents.15
Through such rebranding of Turkish foreign policy identity,
the AKP rebranded Turkey as a central player in global
politics and the AKP itself as “the” party carrying Turkey
into such a leadership position. Within this formulation,
the AKP situated itself as the representative of an
“oppressed majority” at home and abroad. Internationally,
Palestine occupied a special place as the historically
friendly relations between Turkey and Israel deteriorated
starting with the infamous “one-minute” intervention by
the then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan against
then-President of Israel Simon Peres (New York Times,
January 29, 2009). Before this, Turkish citizens commonly
believed that Turkey was passively fulfilling the demands
of great powers, especially Western powers, in its foreign
policy, even if those demands were counterproductive to
the interests of Turkey. The party portrayed its departure
from the international status-quo on Palestine as a move
to break away from past dependencies and start a new
era for Turkish foreign policy voicing the demands of the
AKP’s Second Term (2007-2011)
As the AKP entered its second term in office, it faced a
rather peculiar situation. In domestic politics, the party
had increased its vote shares and continued to govern
Turkey without a coalition partner, but it also was facing a
trial by the Turkish Constitutional Court for its closure. In
foreign policy, the AKP was suffering from the backlashes
of the slowing down of EU accession negotiations. Hence,
the party aimed both, in then-Foreign Affairs Minister
Davutoğlu’s words, “to inject foreign policy activism and
self-confidence back into the domestic political scene”16
after the EU snub and to show how under AKP’s central
33
“silent majority.”19 By more vocally critiquing international
powers on the issue of Palestine, the AKP was telling
the Turkish electorate that now was the time for the
“oppressed majority” in the “peripheries”20 in domestic
politics, namely, those in the conservative majority who
had been marginalized politically by secular (laicist) elites,
to redefine the political center of Turkish politics under the
leadership of the AKP.21
Diyarbakir as it is for the West Bank and Gaza” and that
“the winner today is not only Turkey but also the Middle
East, Caucasia, and the Balkans” (T24, June 12, 2011). In
the following year, AKP became an outspoken supporter
of protesters during the Arab Spring and started espousing
Turkey as a model for the region. In then-Foreign Affairs
Minister Davutoğlu’s words, “when you compared them
years ago with Turkey today, you could see the change of
democratic spirit and institutionalization.”27
Such a rebranding of Turkish foreign policy identity and
by extension AKP’s party identity not only appealed to
the nationalist sentiments among the Turkish electorate
regardless of political orientations22 but also strengthened
AKP’s support by consolidating party identity among
its base. “As of 2011 only about 10% of the electorate
appear[ed] to have shifted from one party to another
compared to 2007.”23
Through such an identity-based foreign policy, the AKP
was telling its supporters that the party represented a
community, rather than a constituency, beyond national
territories and bound by a common culture, values, and
traditions. In so doing, the party was communicating its
“community” that their bonds were emotional rather than
strategic/political. For instance, in the 2014 municipal
election rallies, even though this was a local election
about urban problems, the party brought up the military
overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and made
analogies between the overthrow of former President
Mohamed Morsi and the AKP, suggesting that “outside
forces” in alliance with old elites were trying to weaken the
majority, the Brotherhood and by extension the AKP.
AKP’s Third Term (2011-2015)
Unlike its first two terms in office, the AKP started its
third term in office with confidence. Not only had it
won a third consecutive election, but it also had grown
into a “dominant party,” that is “a party that outdistances
all the others (and thus) is significantly stronger than
others.”24 In addition to controlling the executive and the
legislative offices, the 2010 referendum decreased the
political balancing power of the judiciary and the military.
This contrasted with the AKP’s first two terms, in which
the party was limited in its actions despite its electoral
dominance. This confidence and dominance meant the
party could reshape Turkish politics.
Such an identity-based foreign policy, however, also
created socio-political polarizations. In particular, the
domestication of the Syrian conflict with the increasing
number of Syrian refugees and twin car bombs in Reyhanlı
near the Syrian border, which killed 51 individuals, in
2013, furthered this divide. In this polarizing context, the
military coup against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
became a metaphor for Turkish domestic politics. While
the AKP associated the Brotherhood’s overthrow in Egypt
with past military coups and past closures of Islamic
parties in Turkey, the CHP, the major opposition party, saw
the situation as an example of the dangers of using religion
for political purposes (Milliyet, July 6, 2013). While the
AKP continued to consolidate party identifications among
its supporters, this identity-based community building also
started to create polarizations in Turkey.
In this period, AKP’s foreign policy became more identitybased. In particular, the party started emphasizing the
importance of traditions, values, history and geography
in its foreign policy,25 positioning itself as a new regional
hegemon and as an example to the rest of the Muslim
Middle East.26 In his 2011 elections victory speech,
then-Prime Minister Erdoğan stated that AKP’s victory
was the victory of the “oppressed” and that it was “much
of a victory for Istanbul as it is in Sarajevo, as much of a
victory for Izmir as it is for Beirut, as much of a victory for
34
Identity politics
AKP’s Fourth Term (2015-)
(Endnotes)
The AKP started its fourth term facing serious threats to
its political dominance: in the June 2015 general elections,
AKP lost its parliamentary majority only to win it back
in the November 2015 general elections, and on July
15, 2016, it witnessed a coup attempt. Furthermore, the
party identified serious external threats due to regional
developments. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş
stated, “a lot of Turkey’s problems today are the result of
Turkey’s Syria foreign policy” (Hürriyet, August 18, 2016).
As the AKP started its fourth and current term, it seriously
needed to unite Turkish public opinion.
1. See: Hasret Dikici Bilgin, “Foreign Policy Orientation
of Turkey’s Pro-Islamist Parties: A Comparative Study
of the AKP and Refah,” Turkish Studies 9, no. 3 (2008):
407–21; Saban Tanıyıcı, “Transformation of Political Islam
in Turkey: Islamist Welfare Party’s Pro-EU Turn,” Party
Politics 9, no. 4 (2003): 463–83.
To do so, the AKP today seems to have turned toward
a nationalist foreign policy aimed to create national
unity against external threats. The AKP has foremost
complained that the international community left Turkey
alone against these unprecedented threats after the coup
attempt. Specifically, the AKP started criticizing traditional
allies, the United States and the EU in particular, for not
showing their support for Turkish democracy. One theme
brought up by the news media has been the allegation
that the last military coup in 1980 had tacit U.S. support
because the U.S. embassy in Turkey allegedly notified
then-U.S. President Carter of the coup with the words “our
boys have done it.” Furthermore, when on August 24, 2016,
President Erdoğan announced the Turkish military’s Syria
involvement, he stated “you cannot divide our nation, you
cannot lower our flag, you cannot smash up our homeland,
our state, you cannot silence our call to prayer, you cannot
bring this country to your knees, you cannot bring to heel
these people” (AA, August 24, 2016).
3. Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “Public Choice and Foreign Affairs:
Democracy and International Relations in Turkey,” New
Perspectives on Turkey 40 (2009): 57–81.
2. See: Soner Çağaptay, “Is Turkey Leaving the West?,”
Foreign Affairs, October 26, 2009, http://www.
foreignaffairs.com/articles/65661/soner-cagaptay/isturkey-leaving-the-west.
4. Kenneth Janda et al., “Changes in Party Identity:
Evidence from Party Manifestos,” Party Politics 1, no. 2
(1995): 171–96.
5. Lerna K. Yanık, “Foreign Policy during 2011
Parliamentary Elections in Turkey: Both an Issue and NonIssue,” Turkish Studies 13, no. 2 (2012): 213–27.
6. Christopher S. Browning, “Nation Branding, National
Self-Esteem, and the Constitution of Subjectivity in Late
Modernity,” Foreign Policy Analysis, no. 1 (2013): 1–20.
7. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign
Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1992).
Such nationalist reorientation in foreign policy and
domestic calls for national unity has been somewhat
reminiscent of the secular (laicist) foreign policy paradigm
in Turkish politics that “Turks have no friends other than
Turks.” How the Turkish electorate will perceive and react
to AKP’s latest expression of party identity as a result of
this new foreign policy orientation is yet to be seen.
8. Ali Balcı, “‘Dış Politika’: Yeni Bir Kavramsallaştırma
Bağlamında Egemenlik Mitinin Analizi,” Uluslararası
İlişkiler 7, no. 28 (2011): 3–29.
9. Yücel Bozdağlıoğlu, “Modernity, Identity and Turkey’s
Foreign Policy,” Insight Turkey 10, no. 1 (2008): 55–76.
10. Jillian Schwedler, “Review Article: Can Islamists
Become Moderates? Rethinking the Inclusion-Moderation
Hypothesis,” World Politics 63, no. 2 (2011): 347–76.
35
11. Murat Somer, “Moderation of Religious and Secular
Politics, a Country’s Centre and Democratization,”
Democratization 21, no. 2 (2014): 244–67.
18. Ahmet Davutoğlu, “Turkey’s Foreign Policy Vision:
An Assessment of 2007,” Insight Turkey 10, no. 1 (2008):
77–96.
12. Ali Çarkoǧlu, “Who Wants Full Membership? :
Characteristics of Turkish Public Support for EU
Membership,” in Turkey and the European Union:
Domestic Politics, Economic Integration and International
Dynamics, ed. Ali Çarkoǧlu and Barry Rubin (Portland,
OR: Frank Cass, 2003), 171–94.
19. AKP, “2002-2014 Sessiz Devrim: Türkiye’nin
Demokratik Değişim ve Dönüşüm Envanteri.” Available
at: https://www.akparti.org.tr/site/haberler/sessizdevrim/77738#1.
20. See: Şerif Mardin, Religion, Society, and Modernity in
Turkey (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006).
13. AKP, “2002 AKP Election Manifesto.”
21. Dietrich Jung, “The Domestic Context of New Activism
in Turkish Foreign Policy: Does Religion Matter?,”
International Journal 67, no. 1 (2012): 23–38.
14. Cem Başlevent, Hasan Kirmanoğlu, and Burhan
Şenatalar, “Party Preferences and Economic Voting in
Turkey (Now That the Crisis Is Over),” Party Politics 15, no.
3 (2009): 377–91.
22. Guenther Seufert, “TESEV’in Kamuoyu Araştırması
üzerine: Türkiye’de Dış Politika Algısı,” 2011. Available at:
http://www.tesev.org.tr/.
15. Burhanettin Duran, “Türk Dış Politikasinin Iç Siyaset
Boyutu: 2010 Değerlendirmesi,” in Türk Dış Politikası
Yıllığı, ed. Burhanettin Duran, Kemal Inat, and Mesut
Özcan (Ankara, Turkey: SETA, 2011), 15–66.
23. Ali Çarkoğlu, “Turkey’s 2011 General Elections:
Towards a Dominant Party System?,” Insight Turkey 13, no.
3 (2011): 43–62.
16. Ahmet Davutoğlu, “Turkey’s Zero-Problems Foreign
Policy,” Foreign Policy, May 20, 2010, http://www.
foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/20/turkeys_zero_
problems_foreign_policy?page=full.
24. Ibid.
25. Yanık, “Foreign Policy during 2011 Parliamentary
Elections in Turkey: Both an Issue and Non-Issue.”
17. Davutoglu cited in: Metin Gürcan, “Theory or Attitude?
A Comparative Analysis of Turkish Newspaper Articles
on Turkish Foreign Policy, June 2008-June 2011,” Turkish
Studies 14, no. 2 (2013): 346–71.
26. Ibid.
27. Emel Parlar Dal, “The Transformation of Turkey’s
Relations with the Middle East: Illusion or Awakening?,”
Turkish Studies 13, no. 2 (2012): 245–67.
36
Identity politics
Opportunity Missed:
Identity Alignment and Turkey’s Kurdish Question
By Lisel Hintz, Barnard College
Over the last year and a half, the approach of Turkey’s
ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to the
country’s so-called “Kurdish Question” has been
characterized by highly polarizing nationalist rhetoric,
deadly sieges targeting Kurdish cities, and persecution
of individuals demonstrating support for the Kurdish
cause.1 Prior to this period, however, the AKP had taken
unprecedented steps toward resolving the decades-long
conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK) with the “Solution Process”
(Çozüm Süreci) approach it announced in 2013. Most
notably, the AKP crossed a former red line in Turkish
politics by holding secret negotiations with jailed PKK
leader Abdullah Öcalan. In return for promises to make
concessions such as allowing legal defenses to be in one’s
mother tongue, the Kurdish delegation – comprised,
importantly, of politicians who publicly advocated a
peaceful resolution to the conflict2 – promised to work
towards the PKK’s laying down of arms and withdrawal
from Turkish territory. A solution to the Kurdish Question
seemed closer than ever in 2014.
which are disputed by each party4 – this paper explores
the conditions that enabled ground-breaking overtures by
the AKP toward solving the Kurdish Question. In brief,
I illustrate how a generally unthinkable policy becomes
possible. Applying an identity content framework, I
illustrate how what I term Republican Nationalists and
Ottoman Islamists view the issue of Turkey’s Kurds in
profoundly different ways and how these differences shape
the spectrum of options deemed appropriate to address the
issues for each.
Specifically, while Republican Nationalists’ conception
of Kurdish politics as inherently dangerous creates an
identity red line that precludes public expression of
Kurdishness, no such notion limits the AKP’s Ottoman
Islamist understanding of national identity in this way. I
therefore conceptualize the missed opportunity to solve
the Kurdish Question as a case of identity alignment, in
which the absence of identity red lines created space for
policy outreach impossible under previous governments.
This analysis reveals that current hostilities between the
AKP government and the Kurds are rooted in political
power struggles over Kurdish support for President Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan’s efforts to consolidate personal power by
downplaying animosity between groups. As conflictual
as their relations appear now, this distinction shapes
the potential for the eventual resolution of the Kurdish
Question.
This recent prospect for the resolution of a conflict that
has cost tens of thousands of lives and has plagued the
Turkish Republic since its founding in 1923 throws the
country’s current potential to devolve into civil war
into even starker relief.3 Rather than detail the bafflingly
intricate set of back-and-forth gambits in the rise and fall
of the Kurdish Question under AKP rule – nearly all of
4 The AKP, for example, claims that the PKK broke the ceasefire
by assassinating two policemen on 22 July 2015, thus justifying the
bombing of PKK militants in airstrikes beginning 24 July. The PKK
denied responsibility for the assassinations, suggesting they were carried
out by the People’s Defense Forces (HPG), a militant wing separate
from the PKK, and thus did not constitute a breach of the ceasefire
agreement. See “PKK’dan Şehit Edilen İki Polis için Flaş Açıklama: Biz
Yapmadık,” Cumhuriyet Gazetesi, 29 July 2015: http://www.cumhuriyet.
com.tr/haber/turkiye/333183/PKK_dan_sehit_edilen_iki_polis_icin_
flas_aciklama__Biz_yapmadik.html#.
1 “O Akademisyenler Tutuklandı,” Hürriyet, 16 March 2016: http://
www.hurriyet.com.tr/o-akademisyenler-tutuklandi-40069893.
2 “Sürecin Adına Barış Süreci de İmralı Süreci de Diyebiliriz,”
T24Haber.com, 6 March 2013: http://t24.com.tr/haber/surecin-adinabaris-sureci-de-imrali-sureci-de-diyebiliriz,225165.
3 Metin Gurcan, “Türkiye İç Savaşın Eşiğinde Mi,” Al-Monitor,
14 December 2015: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/tr/
originals/2015/12/turkey-clashes-between-pkk-and-security-forcescivil-war.html
37
Identity Red Lines: Proscribed Behavior and Permissive
Conditions
line for societal organization meant that ethnicity was a
relatively less salient and politically unimportant form
of identification. Relatedly, the AKP’s Ottoman Islamist
understanding of Turkey’s national identity promoted by
the AKP contains no red line, no prohibition against the
public and even political expression of ethnic identity.
While the AKP crossed one political red line by carrying
out talks with the PKK, another form of red line was
involved to make this act possible. In previous work,
I develop the concept of identity “red lines” to denote
stances on issues seemingly deemed intolerable by
supporters of competing understandings of national
identity.5 In making the nebulous concept of identity
easier to operationalize, I use a framework for the content
of various “proposals” for national identity to parse out
behaviors and attitudes that are not only inappropriate
but fundamentally unacceptable to supporters of a rival
proposal, i.e. identity redlines. First, constitutive norms
provide guidelines for membership and appropriate
behavior within the Ingroup, defining who “we” are and
how we should behave. Second, the social purpose defines
group interests – that is, the goals that the Ingroup believes
it should achieve. Third, relational meaning defines the
Ingroup’s relation to various Outgroups. Finally, the
cognitive worldview component provides an overarching
sense of the group’s role in the world. Collectively, these
components delineate who the group is and how its
members should behave. Importantly, this framework
does not assume that any of these elements are fixed;
rather, through processes of contestation – both within an
Ingroup and among an Ingroup and various Outgroups, –
these components can and do change.
In direct contrast, previous Turkish government
and military elites holding a Republican Nationalist
understanding of Turkish identity supported the
elimination of the public expression of ethnicity, often
through brutal means.6 For Republican Nationalists,
who draw inspiration from Ottoman collapse rather
than Ottoman glory, particularly the devastatingly
dismembering effects of ethno-nationalism during the
Balkan Wars and World War I, articulating an ethnic
identity was the equivalent of potential support for a
separatist movement. Even uttering the word “Kurd” or
engaging in Kurdish naming practices was considered
threatening to the unity and stability of the Republic.7
Difference was inherently dangerous. While Kurdish
militants revolted against the nationalization efforts8 of the
Turkish government in the Republic’s early years as part of
the Sheikh Said Rebellion and later as the PKK, Republican
Nationalists in government and society generally viewed
all self-proclaimed Kurds as dangerous irrespective of
their individual views on violence against the Turkish state.
Public expression of Kurdishness was a red line not to be
tolerated.
Drawing inspiration from Ottoman-era administration of
social groups along religious lines, institutionalized in the
millet system, the AKP and its supporters view religion as
the most salient category of membership. As the Ottoman
caliphate represented the institutional and spiritual home
of Sunni Islam, being a Sunni Muslim is thus a constitutive
norm of membership in today’s Ottoman Islamist Ingroup.
The internalization of religion as the primary identity
As a brief demonstration of the power of such red lines,
the idea of the ultra-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP)
making favorable outreaches to the Kurds is virtually
unthinkable no matter how big the electoral payoff might
seem; its Pan-Turkic Nationalist members would not
support it, and, equally importantly, Turkey’s Kurds would
6 See, for example, Welat Zeydanlıoğlu, “The White Turkish Man’s
Burden: Orientalism, Kemalism, and the Kurds in Turkey,” Guido Rings
and Anne Ife (eds) Neocolonial Mentalities in Contemporary Europe
(Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2008).
5 The qualifier “seemingly” is used here to emphasize the constructed
and malleable nature of identities and their constitutive components,
no matter how intractable contestation over particular components
may appear at a given time. Lisel Hintz, “‘Take It Outside!’ National
Identity Contestation in the Foreign Policy Arena,” European Journal of
International Relations, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2016.
7 See Senem Aslan, “Incoherent State: The Controversy over Kurdish
Naming in Turkey,” European Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol. 10, 2009.
8 On this concept, see Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
38
Identity politics
not buy it. This history of open enmity and violent attacks9
by Pan-Turkic Nationalists directed toward Kurds rules out
any electoral cooperation, at least in the foreseeable future.
The unprecedented nature of the Solution Process reflects
a recognition by the AKP that previous efforts had failed.
It also produced an unprecedented response. At the 2013
annual celebration of the Spring Festival of Newroz in
Diyarbakır, PKK leader Öcalan’s Newroz message read by
Kurdish politicians, not only called for a ceasefire but also
proclaimed: “The Turkish people who live in what is called
Turkey today – ancient Anatolia – should recognize that
their common life with the Kurds, under the flag of Islam,
rests on the principles of amity and solidarity.”14 Given the
radical Marxist roots of the PKK, the use of Islam as an
overarching identity that binds Turks and Kurds together
is truly extraordinary. However politically calculated
the statement may have been, elites were urging their
constituencies to recognize a long-standing commonality,
to acknowledge being privileged members of a common
Ingroup with sacred roots. Such statements would not
have been possible under a Republican Nationalist
government (or any Pan-Turkic Nationalist government
that could have been in power), nor would they have been
believed by either constituency if declared.
For Ottoman Islamists, however, Kurds who openly declare
their Kurdishness can be part of the Ingroup as long as
they meet the other constitutive criteria. Alevi Kurds, for
example, do not adhere to the Sunni Muslim constitutive
norm and thus are relegated to the Outgroup by both
Ottoman Islamists and Republican Nationalists.10 Sunni
Kurds, however, can be and were enthusiastically courted
by the AKP through multiple rounds of outreach. This
absence of a red line against the public expression of ethnic
identity thus becomes a permissive condition in the AKP’s
extension of overtures toward the Kurds. In effect, the
Ottoman Islamist proposal for national identity aligns with
a particular initiative in a configuration that is novel in
Turkish politics.
However, the AKP did not make substantial outreaches to
the Kurds until its later terms, with a (largely unsuccessful)
Kurdish Opening announced in 200911 and the Solution
Process of 2013. As Tezcür notes, the AKP was arguably
constrained from doing so when it first came to power
in 2002 because of the political strength of actors such as
the Turkish military, historically a staunchly Republican
Nationalist institution.12 After using the EU accession
process as a foreign policy arena in which to contest
Republican Nationalism and weaken its institutional
representatives back home,13 the AKP was no longer
restricted in its menu of choices for dealing with the
Kurdish Question.
Opportunity Missed: Power Politics
The shift from previous Republican Nationalist political
elites’ perception of red lines to a case of identity alignment
under Turkey’s current Ottoman Islamist AKP government
helps to explain how a previously inconceivable political
outreaches to the Kurds was made possible. The AKP was
able to convincingly and effectively cross the political red
line of negotiating with Kurds as Ingroup partners because
of the absence of an identity red line that deems the political
recognition of Kurdishness anathema to Turkishness.
While the Solution Process was not without difficulties,15
the ceasefire held and the parties remained committed
to negotiations. Erdoğan received enough of the Kurdish
vote to grant him victory in the first round of the 2014
9 See, for example: “Video Shows Turkish Nationalists Attacking ProKurdish Party Offices in Capital,” Reuters and Vice News, 9 September
2015: https://news.vice.com/article/video-shows-turkish-nationalistsattacking-pro-kurdish-party-offices-in-capital.
10 “Interview with Mehmet Bayrak: Alevi Kurds’ Double Oppression
and the Myths of Turkey’s Official History,” Kurdistan Tribune, 14
December 2012: http://kurdistantribune.com/2012/alevi-kurds-doubleoppression-myths-of-turkeys-official-history/.
14 “Abdullah Öcalan’ın Newroz Mesajının Tam Metni: ‘Bu Son Değil
Yeni bir Başlangıçtır’,” Sendika.org, 21 March 2013: http://sendika10.
org/2013/03/abdullah-ocalanin-newroz-mesajinin-tam-metni-bu-sondegil-yeni-bir-baslangictir/. Emphasis mine.
11 Özlem Kayhan Pusane, “Turkey’s Kurdish Opening: Long Awaited
Achievements and Failed Expectations,” Turkish Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1,
2014.
15 For example a frustrated Kurdish delegation said the AKP was too
slow to act on its promises, some Kurds engaged in the anti-government
Gezi Protests beginning June 2013, and most Kurds were disappointed
that the September 2013 “democratization package” of proposed
constitutional amendments did not include mother-tongue education
12 Güneş Murat Tezcür, “When Democratization Radicalizes: The
Kurdish Nationalist Movement in Turkey,” Journal of Peace Research,
Vol. 47, 2010, p. 779.
13 See Hintz 2016.
39
presidential election. Selahattin Demirtaş, co-chairman
of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) – a pro-Kurdish
party that courts a broad electoral base with a platform
supporting gender equality, pro-environmental policies,
and LGBTQ rights –received approximately 10 percent of
the vote. While an impressive achievement for Kurds and
Turkish liberals alike, the numbers also signal that Erdoğan’s
promises to continue the Solution Process and his use of
brotherly Muslim communal outreaches16 were successful
in his outreaches to significant elements of Kurdish
voters. In the Kurdish-populated provinces of Şanlıurfa,
Bingöl, and Van, Erdoğan received 69, 66, and 43 percent,
respectively; in Diyarbakır, he received 34 percent.17
constitution to keep Kurdish parties out of parliament20 –
further provoked Erdoğan’s ire, as the party’s allotted seats
dislodged the AKP’s parliamentary majority for the first
time since it came to power in 2002. Crucial for achieving
Erdoğan’s primary goal, the loss of a two-thirds majority
in the June 2015 election greatly hindered the chances of
approving a presidential system for Turkey. The future of the
AKP and Erdoğan’s leadership appeared shakier than ever.
The timing of the breakdown in the ceasefire is puzzling
unless we consider the provocative effect created by the
Kurds’ obstruction of Erdoğan’s presidential ambitions.
Although PKK militants killed members of the Turkish
security forces in several attacks following the Kobani
siege, the Turkish government decided to act in reprisal
against PKK forces only after the HDP’s June election
gains. Two days after the 22 July 2015 revenge killing of
two police officers in anger over the failure to prevent an
ISIS bomb attack that killed 32 Kurdish activists headed
to rebuild Kobani, an act for which the PKK denied
responsibility,21 the Turkish Armed Forces began bombing
PKK targets again for the first time in more than two years.
The sieges of cities like Cizre in which tens of civilians died
were legitimized as necessary in the campaigns to root out
terrorists.22
However, signs that the interests of Kurds were not
taken seriously dramatically weakened this developing
partnership. Ultimately, a power struggle intensified by
personal ambitions, rather than any deep-seated grouplevel identity conflict, scuppered what was Turkey’s most
likely chance at solving the Kurdish Question. Frustrated
by the Turkish government’s refusal to defend the Kurdishpopulated Syrian city of Kobani against an ISIS siege in
September 2014, Kurdish leaders began to withdraw their
backing of Turkey’s move to a presidential system.18 This
constituted a serious betrayal to Erdoğan, who views
a presidential system as the ideal embodiment of his
consolidated rule and has politically disowned members
of his party who did not support his ambition.19 The
HDP’s catapult over the 10 percent electoral threshold –
originally put in place as part of the 1982 military-written
The constitutive act of the AKP’s naming of Kurds as
terrorists generated a visceral effect for its supporters that
exacerbated the polarization in Turkey already existing
along many lines, such conservative/secular and Alevi/
Sunni. Following twin bomb attacks in October 2015 that
killed more than 100 Kurdish and leftist peace activists in
Ankara, government officials and supporters reacted with
16 See, for example, a speech given in Diyarbakır two weeks prior
to the election: “Başbakan Erdoğan: Bu Irkçı Adaya Buradan Oy
Çıkmayacak,” Star, 26 July 2014: http://www.star.com.tr/guncel/
basbakan-erdogandan-diyarbakirda-onemli-aciklamalar-haber-918829/.
17 “Cumhurbaşkanlığı: Seçim 2014,” İnternetHaber.com, 23 February
2015: http://secim.internethaber.com/cumhurbaskanligi-secimi-2014/.
20 “Yüzde 10 Barajının Öyküsü,” NTV.com, 30 March 2011:
http://www.ntv.com.tr/turkiye/yuzde-10-barajinin-oykusu,3xMZFVFNkWjU9mAPgxf9g.
18 Demirtaş stated: “We are not a bargaining party… We will not make
you president.” Quoted in Sinan Onuş, “Erdoğan ve Demirtaş’ın Cıkışları
Ne Anlama Geliyor?” BBC Türkçe, 18 March 2015: http://www.bbc.com/
turkce/haberler/2015/03/150318_sinan_erdogan_demirtas.
21 “PKK’dan Şehit Edilen İki Polis için Flaş Açıklama: Biz Yapmadık,”
Cumhuriyet Gazetesi, 29 July 2015: http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/
haber/turkiye/333183/PKK_dan_sehit_edilen_iki_polis_icin_flas_
aciklama__Biz_yapmadik.html#.
19 One of the reasons for hand-selected Prime Minister Ahmet
Davutoğlu’s early (and most likely forced) resignation was his
unsatisfactory support for the shift to a presidential system. See
“Erdoğan Davutoğlu Arası Neden Bozuldu ‘İstifa Süreci’,” MemurHaber.
com, 5 May 201g: http://www.memurhaber.com/erdogan-davutogluarasi-neden-bozuldu-istifa-sureci-1590777h.htm.
22 Mahmut Bozarslan, “Adı Cizre Görünümü Kobani,” AlMonitor, 18 September 2015: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/tr/
originals/2015/09/turkey-kurds-pkk-cizre-curfew-civilian-demandanswers.html.
40
Identity politics
indifference at best,23 and with jeering at worst.24 Because
those who lost their lives were Kurdish or leftist, or just
part of the opposition, they were assumed to be radical,
deviant others who had it coming. Difference has once
again come to be seen as inherently dangerous, this time as
a product of personal animosity and tactical rhetoric.
This novel condition of identity alignment makes the
opportunity missed in the breakdown of the Solution
Process, due to power struggles and the personal animosity
of Turkey’s president, all the more frustrating for those
involved. It may be the case, however, that the public
recognition of Kurdishness legalized under the AKP may
become normalized and internalized to the point where
rolling back the societal and political shifts witnessed
under the AKP may, in turn, become unthinkable,
irrespective of the identity understanding of the future
party in power. On the other hand, a (re)hardening of
identities25 along Turkish-Kurdish lines may also occur
should the conflict continue or devolve, as it currently
threatens, into civil war. New red lines could form where
none existed, further narrowing the chances of a resolution
to the Kurdish Question.
Conclusion
The analytical use of identity proposals and red lines
specifying particular points of contestation among
those proposals allows us to understand how previously
unthinkable policies become conceivable. The
groundbreaking outreach to Kurds under the later terms
of AKP rule become possible because of the identity
alignment of the AKP’s Ottoman Islamism with initiatives
that recognize the public expression of ethnic identity such
as Kurdishness. The political weakening of Republican
Nationalists under the AKP reduced the significance
of their objections to recognizing Kurdishness and
negotiating with the PKK.
23 “Why Did the Justice Minister Smile,” Hürriyet Daily News, 13
October 2015: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/why-did-the-justiceminister-smile.aspx?PageID=238&NID=89764&NewsCatID=503.
24 “Konya’da ‘Saygı Duyurusu’: Ankara’da Hayatını Kaybedenler
Yuhalanıp Islıklandı,” Diken.tr.com, 13 October 2015: http://www.
diken.com.tr/konyada-saygi-durusu-ankarada-hayatini-kaybedenlerisliklandi/.
25 See Daniel Byman and Taylor Seybolt, “Humanitarian Intervention
and Communal Civil Wars: Problems and Alternative Approaches,”
Security Studies, Vol 13, No. 1, 2003.
41
Women’s Representation across National and
Local Office in Turkey
By Abdullah Aydogan, Melissa Marschall, and Marwa Shalaby, Rice University’s Baker Institute
Existing research on political representation in established
democracies has shown that lower-level and less
prestigious offices tend to be more open and accessible
to women as well as other underrepresented groups
(Diamond 1977; Sanbonmatsu 2002; Rule 1987; Welch
well as functional responsibilities – affects the distribution
of female candidates and winners. Our data demonstrate
two main findings. First, the percentage of female candidates
and winners is systematically lower in local legislative
offices compared to the national assembly. Second, the
relationship between female candidacy in local elections and
the importance of office is non-linear; specifically, female
representation in local office is highest for mid-level offices
and lower for both low- and high-level offices.
and Karnig 1979, Vengroff et al. 2003). When it comes to
transitioning democracies, however, much less is known.
This is partly because research on the Middle East and
other regions has focused almost exclusively on women’s
representation at the national level. Indeed, due to the
limited availability of data when it comes to gender
representation at the local level, we know significantly less
about who runs for and holds office, regardless of region or
level of democracy.
Women’s Political Representation Across Levels of
Office
Focusing on women and politics at the national level,
existing studies on the MENA region have paid much
attention to the effect of culture and conservative gender
attitudes on women’s access to political office (Norris and
Inglehart 2001; Fish 2002; Rizzo et al. 2007). Other studies
have highlighted the impact of institutional mechanisms,
such as electoral laws and quota systems (Abou-Zeid 2006;
Darhour and Dahlerup 2013). Some research has also
examined the role played by party ideology. These studies
find that whereas parties with leftist ideologies are more
likely to encourage women’s representation (Beckwith 1992;
Reynolds 1999), parties with conservative ideologies tend
to marginalize women in their party ranks by emphasizing
women’s traditional roles within the family. Conservative
parties are also less likely to adopt quota mechanisms than
left-leaning parties (Şahin-Mencutek 2014). Finally, research
has emphasized the effect of economic development and
demographic characteristics, such as income, population
characteristics, and unemployment rates on women’s
success in the electoral realm (Tolunay 2014).
In this memo, we bridge this gap in the literature
by exploring the relationship between the level and
importance (i.e. prestige) of office and women’s political
representation. Turkey is an ideal case for investigating this
relationship due to the multi-level structure of its electoral
system. To be specific, it has three levels of local councils
and three levels of mayoral positions. Additionally, Turkey
provides an intriguing case, because it has been a pioneer
in granting women political rights since the 1930s, yet
currently ranks lower than many other Middle East and
North Africa (MENA) countries with regards to women’s
representation in national parliaments. Indeed, while
women’s political inclusion in the MENA region has surged
over the past decade, Turkey only recently has witnessed
a modest increase, due solely to policies introduced by the
secular left-leaning parties.
To examine the relationship between female representation
and the level of office, we use an extensive dataset on
electoral candidates and winners in Turkey. We first
compare female representation in national versus local
legislatures, then analyze variations across local electoral
offices. The final part of our analysis focuses on how the
importance of the office – based on electoral geography as
When it comes to the determinants of women’s
representation in local politics, very little is known about
the MENA region in general, and the Turkish case in
particular. Regional studies have shown that local elections
are generally viewed as more parochial and less important
42
Identity politics
to the policymaking process (Tekeli 1981, 1991; Nanes
2015). Consistent with this view, previous work conducted
in established democracies has suggested that lower-level
and less prestigious offices are more open and accessible to
women (Diamond 1977; Sanbonmatsu 2002; Rule 1987).
According to this argument, female candidates gravitate
toward less competitive political offices, which tend to
have lower compensation, shorter terms and less prestige,
because the entry barriers are lower and the likelihood of
winning is greater. In most Western contexts, these offices
tend to concentrate at the local level. To date, however, few
studies have tested this argument empirically. Thus, it is
not clear whether it applies to the MENA region or to the
Turkish case.
local administrative division is based on the provinces.
There are 81 provinces, 30 of which are designated as
metropolitan municipalities. Furthermore, there are
currently 919 district municipalities under the provinces:
519 belong to a metropolitan municipality, whereas the
remaining 400 have no overarching municipal body. The
lowest municipal unit is the sub-district municipality.
Although many of its demographic characteristics are
similar to those of villages, the sub-district is normally
administered under a municipal authority (Ozcaglar, 1996).
Currently, there are 397 sub-district municipalities.2
At each of the three levels of local government, there are
elected mayors and councils.3 Both national and local
legislative offices are elected through a closed party-list,
proportional representation system, while mayoral offices
are elected through plurality rule. Our dataset includes
information for 383,229 candidates from 25 political
parties who competed for 61,531 elected offices.4
Female Representation in Local versus National
Legislative Office in Turkey
As a part of our larger project investigating the
determinants of women’s candidacy and election in
Turkish local politics, we explore in this section the
relationship between the level of office and women’s
representation in elected office. Using an original dataset of
the winners and candidates in the last two local (2009 and
2014) and three national (2011, June 2015, and November
2015) elections,1 we aim not only to systematically examine
which offices female candidates in Turkey are more likely
to seek and win, but also to empirically test the extent to
which patterns of women’s candidacies and office-holding
at the local level differ from those at the national level.
We begin our analysis by comparing the proportion of
female candidates and winners across legislative offices.
Figure 1 reports the percentage of female candidates by
party for the national assembly versus the three local
councils.5 Overall, the data show that the rate of female
candidacies in national elections is consistently higher than
all the local legislative offices. The ruling AKP accounted
for about 16 percent of the female candidates during the
national elections versus 13 percent for those in the district
council elections, 5 percent for those in province council
elections, and 4 percent for those in sub-district council
elections.
As previously noted, Turkey is an interesting case for
the purpose of our study due to its multi-level system
of governance. The most prestigious elected office, after
the presidency, is a legislative position in the parliament,
the Turkish Grand National Assembly. Currently, the
Assembly has 550 seats that are occupied by the four major
political parties: AKP (the governing party), CHP (centerleft), MHP (right-wing nationalist), and BDP/HDP (left
wing pro-Kurdish). When it comes to local governance,
Turkey has a complex administrative structure. The highest
2 The number of districts and sub-districts varied significantly across
the last two local elections due to the recently enacted laws on local
governance (e.g. Law#6360 approved on Nov 12th, 2012). We present
here the most recent data obtained from the government source:
https://www.e-icisleri.gov.tr/Anasayfa/MulkiIdariBolumleri.aspx
3 Non-metropolitan provinces do not have a mayor, but they have a
council.
4 The entire dataset was obtained from the Turkish Higher Electoral
Council (YSK) website. For his invaluable help on data gathering and
processing, we are very grateful to Tayfun Tuna (Ph.D., Computer
Science Department, University of Houston).
5 The numbers for the national elections represent the average
percentage of female candidates in the past three elections (2011,
2015-June, 2015-November) while the numbers for the local elections
represent the average percentage of female candidates in the two last
district council elections (2009, 2014)
1 The gender of the candidates was coded using computer assisted
automated coding technique combined with hand-coding method. The
reliability of our coding is 96.29.
43
Figure 1. Percentage of Female Candidates in National
versus Local Legislative Elections Note: National elections
held (2011, 2015); local elections (2009, 2014).
Figure 2. Percentage of Female Winners for the National
Assembly versus Local Councils
On the other hand, women made up more than 35 percent
of the BDP/HDP’s parliamentary candidates, compared to
about 20 percent of its district council candidates, and 9
percent of its province and sub-district council candidates.
The BDP/HDP’s high representation in national elections
can mainly be attributed to its recently enforced party
quota. Results for the CHP and the MHP also show that
the proportion of female candidates is higher in national
elections than in local legislative elections. In terms of
candidacy, local offices are not more accessible to female
politicians and the percentage of female candidates is
relatively lower in local versus national office.
elections, our research also examines the nature of
female representation in all local offices in more detail.
As presented in Table 1, the highest incidence of women
candidates (15.3 percent) and winners (14.1 percent) was
in the 2014 district council elections. Women were least
represented in the 2009 sub-district council elections (3.9
percent of all candidates), and in the 2009 metropolitan
mayoral elections, which had no female winners.
The data in Table 1 also reveal a striking difference between
the percentage of female candidates and winners for some
of the offices – namely, district mayors, provincial councils,
and metropolitan mayors. In some cases, the percentage
of female winners is less than half the percentage of female
candidates. Our explanation for such difference is twofold.
First, this difference can be attributed to the fact that the
major parties, which account for the overwhelming majority
of winners, tend to have lower shares of female candidates
compared to smaller parties. For example, in 2009 the
percentage of female provincial council candidates for the
four major political parties was 6.68, whereas the overall
percentage of female candidates was 10.06. Second, it may
be due to differences in regard to how parties place female
candidates on their lists. Parties may strategically place
women higher or lower on their lists depending on their
electoral prospects. In other work, we show that the AKP
and MHP are more likely to place female candidates lower
on their lists in districts where they are more likely to win,
compared to districts dominated by leftist parties (Shalaby,
Marschall and Aydogan 2016).
When it comes to the winners of national versus local
legislative elections, the picture is not much different. As the
data in Figure 2 show, the percentage of female winners in
national elections is almost equal to the percentage of female
winners in district council elections for the MHP, CHP and
AKP; however, there is about 15-percentage points gap
between these two offices for the BDP/HDP. Furthermore,
female representation in the provincial and sub-district
councils is almost identical for all the parties and about
10 percentage points lower than female representation in
the district councils. Hence, contrary to expectations, the
proportion of female office holders is not higher in local
legislatures compared to the national assembly.
Female Representation in Local Legislature and
Executives Offices
Beyond simply comparing rates of female candidates
and winners across parliamentary and local council
44
Identity politics
Office Importance and Women’s Political
Representation in Local Office
Figure 3. Percentage of Female Candidates by Local Office
Importance
To compare representation across different types and
levels of local government more systematically, we create
a measure of ‘office importance’. We define importance
by the number of constituents represented by the office
since this taps not only the complexity and prestige of the
office, but also its electoral competiveness. It is simply
the number of registered voters divided by the number of
seats (or mayoral positions) for each office for the 2009
and 2014 local elections. Based on this measure, local
offices are ranked from least to most important as follows:
sub-district council, sub-district mayor, district council,
provincial council, district mayor, and metropolitan mayor.
When we look at the percentage of female winners, the
inverse U-shaped pattern is even more pronounced. As
Figure 4 demonstrates, female candidates are elected at
the highest rates in these mid-level importance district
councils – about 12 percent – while all other offices have
lower rates, ranging from 3 to 5 percent.
To illustrate the relationship between office importance
and female representation, we graph office importance
(logged) by the average percentage of female candidates
(Figure 3) and winners (Figure 4).
Figure 4. Percentage of Female Winners by Office
Importance
Figure 3 indicates that the percentage of female candidates
is highest for district councils, which ranks in the middle
in terms of office importance. In the least important offices
– sub-district councils and mayoralties – the percentage
of female candidacies is the lowest. Finally, for the most
important offices – district mayorships, provincial
councils, and metropolitan mayorships – the proportion
of female candidates is somewhere in the middle, ranging
from 8 to 10 percent.
45
Conclusion
There are a number of explanations for the patterns
depicted in Figures 3 and 4. First, the low level of female
representation in sub-district offices may be attributed
to the demographic characteristics of these jurisdictions.
Since sub-districts are akin to large villages (Ozcaglar
1996), they are more rural in nature and typically have
lower levels of development and education compared
to the larger districts. Gender roles also tend to be more
traditional in these areas. We suspect that women are less
likely to be recruited as candidates in sub-districts, and to
face more electoral challenges when they are on the ballot
for these offices.
In this memo, we explored patterns of female officeseeking and office-holding in Turkey and shed new
empirical light on an aspect of representation that has
heretofore received scant attention in the literature. Our
results indicate that contrary to previous research, national
legislative offices are more accessible to female politicians
compared to local ones in the Turkish context. We also find
a non-linear relationship between female representation
and the importance of local offices.
Taken together, these findings have important implications
for women’s political inclusion in Turkey. This analysis
presents an alarming picture of the current state of
women’s political representation in the country. Despite
international and domestic pressure – especially from the
European Union and women’s movements – to build a
more inclusive political system, the past decade has not
witnessed much improvement for women as political
leaders. Women continue to be marginalized in politics,
especially in less visible and prestigious offices.
Second, the low number of female candidates winning
metropolitan mayoral elections can be attributed to the
importance and the strong competition associated with
these offices. While we observe more female candidates
running in metropolitan mayoral elections, this is largely
driven by the fact that smaller parties with already low
probability of winning tend to nominate more women
for these positions. Indeed, during the last two elections,
small parties nominated 66 out of the 77 female candidates
for the metropolitan mayoral offices. However, only in
Eskisehir, a small party, (Demokratik Sol Parti, DSP) won a
metropolitan mayoral office in the 2009 elections.
Finally, given the current political situation in Turkey,
especially in the aftermath of the failed coup, elites are
more focused on the country’s security and stability, at
the cost of advancing female representation. As in other
parts of the world, women’s issues are often pushed
aside amid heightened national threats or concerns,
such as economic or security crises. Voices calling for
increased women’s rights, including political rights, are
often marginalized in the name of the national interest. If
political elites, especially party leaders do not take the issue
of women’s political inclusion seriously, women’s political
representation will continue to drop as evidenced in the
country’s latest parliamentary elections.
When it comes to explaining the curvilinear relationship in
both figures, we believe that – in contrast to sub-districts
– districts are more urbanized administrative units with
higher levels of socio-economic development in which
gender norms tend to be relatively more egalitarian.
Furthermore, electoral competition for these offices is
considerably less fierce compared to metropolitan and
provincial offices, hence, these offices are more accessible
to female politicians. Finally, the observed pattern for
female nomination and winning in district councils is
intriguing and worth further examination to untangle its
underlying mechanisms. The authors are currently working
on a project to better understand this puzzle.
46
Identity politics
References
Rule, Wilma. 1987. “Electoral Systems, contextual factors
and women’s opportunity for election to parliament in 23
democracies.” Western Political Quarterly, 40(3), 477-498.
Abou-Zeid, Gihan. 2006. “The Arab Region: Women’s
Access to the Decision-making Process Across the Arab
Nation.” In Women, Quotas and Politics, ed. Drude
Dahlerup. New York: Routledge, 168-193.
Şahin-Mencutek, Zeynep. 2014. Gender Politics of the
Justice and Development Party in Turkey.
Beckwith, Karen. 1992. “Comparative Research and
Electoral Systems: Lessons from France and Italy.” Women & Politics 12(1): 1-33.
Sanbonmatsu, Kira. 2002. “Gender Stereotypes and Vote
Choice.” American Journal of Political Science 46(1): 20-34.
Shalaby, Marwa, Melissa Marschall, and Abdullah
Aydogan. 2016. “From Town Councils to the Grand
National Assembly:Women’s Electoral Representation in
Turkey.” Paper prepared for presentation at the Annual
Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association,
Chicago, April.
Diamond, Irene. 1977. Sex Roles in the State House. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Darhour, Hanane and Drude Dahlerup. 2013. “Sustainable
Representation of Women through Gender Quotas:
A Decade’s Experience in Morocco.” Women’s Studies
International Forum 41(2): 132-142.
Tekeli, Sirin. 1981. “Women in Turkish Politics.” In Women
in Turkish Society, ed. Nermine Abadan-Unat. Brill,
293-310.
Fish, M. Stephen. 2002. “Islam and Authoritarianism.”
World Politics 55(1): 4-37.
________. 1991. Women in Modern Turkish Society.
London: Zed Books Ltd.
Nanes, Stefanie. 2015. “‘The Quota Encouraged Me to Run’:
Evaluating Jordan’s Municipal Quota for Women.” Journal
of Middle East Women’s Studies 11(3): 261-282.
Tolunay, Ozlem I. 2014. “Women in Erdogan’s Turkey.”
New Politics 14(4).
Norris, Pippa and Ronald Inglehart. 2001. “Cultural
Obstacles to Equal Representation.” Journal of Democracy
12(3): 126-140.
Vengroff, Richard, Nyiri, Zsolt, & Fugiero, Melissa. 2003.
“Electoral System and Gender Representation in SubNational Legislatures: Is there a National—Sub-National
Gender Gap?” Political Research Quarterly, 56(2), 163-173.
Ozcaglar, Ali. (1996). “Türkiye’nin İdari Coğrafyası
Bakımından Köy, Bucak, İlçe, İl Ve Belde Kavramları
Üzerine Düşünceler.”A.Ü.D.T.C.F. Coğrafya Araştırmaları
Dergisi, Sayı : 12, s.25-33, Ankara.
Welch, Susan and Albert K. Karnig. 1979. “Correlates of
Female Office Holding in City Politics.” Journal of Politics
41(2): 478-491.
Reynolds, Andrew. 1999. “Women in the Legislatures and
Executives of the World: Knocking at the Highest Glass
Ceiling.” World Politics 51(4): 547-572.
Rizzo, Helen, Abdel-Hamid Abdel-Latif, and Katherine
Meyer. 2007. “The Relationship between Gender Equality
and Democracy: A Comparison of Arab Versus Non-Arab
Muslim Societies.” Sociology 41(6): 1151-1170.
47
48
The Kurdish Question
49
The Many Faces of Kurdish Political Representation in Turkey
Sabri Çiftçi, the Michael W. Suleiman Chair in Arab and Arab-American Studies at Kansas State University
Empirical scholarship on representative democracy does
not fully explain the role of political representation in
the presence of enduring ethnic conflict. Ethnic politics
involves complicated choices ranging from the use of
violence to inclusion in governance. Leaders of an ethnic
movement may form political parties, participate in
elections and representative institutions, use violence,
or utilize a combination of these means toward the
achievement of ethnic interests. Turkey has had an
oscillating record of democratization and an irregular
civil war in the last thirty years. One of the longest
ethnic insurgencies, recently escalating in the midst of
Syrian war, between Partiya Karkerân Kurdistan (PKK)
and the Turkish state provides unique opportunities for
understanding the synergies between ethnic conflict
and politics of representation. In this essay, I discuss
the challenges and consequences of Kurdish political
representation in Turkey.
The second constraint is the use of violent insurgent
strategy and its capacity to undermine diversified minority
representation. The insurgent organization, PKK, has been
keen to protect its political hegemony over Kurdish people
for future recruitment and for increased bargaining power
with the state. To that end, PKK has strategically used
violence by provoking state repression against the civilians.
This strategy paid off to the extent that “victimization” led
to increased support for the violent insurgency in Kurdish
dominated districts. At the same time, PKK has exploited
Kurdish descriptive representation as leverage to expand
the boundaries of “acceptable demands” toward Kurdish
cultural and political autonomy. While this strategy has
been generally successful, it comes at the expense of
independent and diversified representation of ethnic
interests. Under these constraints, the Kurdish members
of parliament have utilized parliamentary means and
deliberative channels in civil society to represent minority
interests in a way that allowed them to make limited
contributions to the Turkish democracy. I explain these
arguments below by drawing from the recent advances in
representational theory and by introducing preliminary
data from a larger research project.
The political wing of Kurdish ethno-political movement
has remained highly active in the Turkish political scene
since the 1990s, forming political parties, participating
in elections, and voicing their demands in parliament.
However, while this participation is significant, descriptive
representation of the Kurdish minority operates under dual
constraints. The first arises from the strict representational
style of Turkish nationalist elite privileging majoritarianism
over participatory and deliberative interpretations
of democracy. According to this view, representative
democracy is a procedural game that aggregates individual
preferences into a “general will,” the embodiment of
national interest. This abstract notion of “general will”
dismisses the idea of minority representation. As a result,
any representative initiatives aiming to legitimize the
expression of Kurdish identity and advance substantive
representation of minority interests have been blocked by
the state elites through constitutional restrictions, legal
procedures, and non-political means.
Why does ethnic descriptive representation matter?
Representation is defined as the act of “making present
again” by standing for and acting for the represented
(Pitkin, 1967). The standard account of representation
focuses on procedural formalities including authorization
of a representative and the resulting responsiveness
(i.e. accountability) of this agent to her constituency.
Proponents of contemporary representational theory, in
contrast, argue that representation cannot be reduced
to predefined authorization rules insofar as its meaning
and scope remains contingent on political realities
(Plotke 1997). Such contingency most readily concerns
the representation of historically disadvantaged groups
(Williams, 2000) and emergence of deliberative democratic
50
The Kurdish Question
Challenges facing Kurdish Political Representation in
Turkey
practices (Habermas 1996). Representing is no longer the
aristocratic business of a select few nor can it be limited
to the equalizing power of territorial representation.
Representation is best defined as “politics of presence”
(Phillips 1998) and “inclusion” of all (Plotke 1997; Williams
2000).
Several factors prevent descriptive representation of
Kurdish minority to serve its full potential. Turkey has a
parliamentary system with some unusual characteristics
including a 10 percent electoral threshold and a popularly
elected president with extensive powers over legislative
and executive domain in the context of a parliamentary
system. In the same vein, the 1982 Turkish Constitution
privileges a wholesale defense of national interest against
individual rights. For example, the so-called “spirit of
constitution” implies that once a “general will” is formed in
elections the representatives will strive to act in accordance
with the interests of the whole. As a result, tensions
between the representation of the whole and the parts are
not uncommon in the Turkish political scene.
In contemporary views of democracy, representation of
women and historically marginalized groups becomes
a contingent reality within an informal and deliberative
public sphere (Urbinati and Warren 2008). In this
conceptualization, descriptive representation of ethnic
groups is particularly relevant and can serve multiple
functions beyond political inclusion. Descriptive
representation is defined as the level of resemblance
between the represented and the agent (Pitkin 1967). It
allows minority representatives to gain legitimacy for the
marginalized groups, attend to constituency interests, use
formal political spaces to inform policy, and contribute to
a culture of consensus by forming new political alliances
(Griffin, 2014; Mansbridge 1999). In summary, descriptive
representation leads to substantive representation,
allowing an agent to pursue the interest of the represented
(Pitkin 1967).
The constitution bans the formation of ethnic political
parties, yet Kurdish elite have formed several parties since
the early 1990s, fueling tensions between the proponents
of “national interest” and those representing ethnic
demands. As Hanna Pitkin (1967, p.217) argues, “one of
the most important features of representative government
is in its capacity for resolving the conflicting claims of
the parts, on the basis of their common interest in the
common welfare of the state.” The inability of state elites to
resolve such dilemmas has resulted in a number of political
exclusion strategies, including closure of several ethnic
political parties, extrajudicial killings, removal of legislative
immunity, prosecution of Kurdish parliamentarians,
and more recently the exclusion of Kurdish political
representatives from institutional deliberation since the
resurgence of conflict in 2015. Facing such obstacles,
Kurdish representatives have pursued an ambitious agenda
toward the expressions of Kurdish political identity and the
expansion of their demands beyond the limits predefined
by the constitution. Under such pressures, descriptive
representation of the Kurdish minority has evolved
into symbolic representation of an ethnic identity with
instances of “inverse representation” (Barker, 1942). Inverse
representation is characterized by shifting the sides of
principal-agent dichotomy in the act of re-presenting and,
These functions are especially likely to gain salience in
conflict settings where substantive representation of ethnic
minorities may help end violence. Furthermore, descriptive
representation of historically disadvantaged groups, such
as those that have been subject to constant repression,
may increase their civic participation if representatives
of these groups use informal venues to mobilize their
constituency in the presence of continual conflict.
While several challenges prevented the Kurdish political
movement from reaping the full benefits of participation
in representative institutions, members of parliament
were, nonetheless, instrumental in the implementation
of policies on Kurdish language in education and public
spaces, cultural expressions of Kurdish identity, and human
rights protection.
51
as described below, it makes the constituency (Kurdish
people) represent what the principal (i.e. PKK) wants.
monopoly over its ethnic constituency, it will gain the
upper hand in using the formal spaces of representation to
open new political avenues for advancing its own goals.
Inverse representation is as much the result of noncompromising elites who sacredly protect “national
interest” as it is the result of additional constraints placed
on Kurdish representatives by the insurgent organization.
The PKK has built its political hegemony on the Kurdish
ethnic constituency through the strategic use of violence
during instances of political openings. Such strategy is
quite unexpected given existing political science research
on ethnic conflict resolution. Common wisdom holds that
democratization induces pluralized decision-making to
serve the interests of historically disadvantaged groups
and to bring about peaceful resolution of ethnic conflict
(Alonso and Ruiz-Rufino, 2007). However, this rationale
falls short of explaining both “inverse representation”
and continuation of violent ethnic conflict in Turkey
to the extent that “democratization process does not
necessarily facilitate the end of violent conflict as long
as it introduces competition that challenges the political
hegemony of the insurgent organization over its ethnic
constituency” (Tezcür 2010, 776). The implications of this
logic can be applied to the representative behavior of the
Kurdish members of parliament in Turkey. Following a
relative peace period in 1999-2004, the PKK reverted to a
violent campaign as Justice and Development Party (AKP)
made significant electoral gains in Kurdish districts to
threaten the electoral base of insurgent organization. The
organization used a similar strategy during negotiations
between Abdullah Öcalan and the Turkish state (20112015) when a period of ceasefire was followed by the
intensification of conflict. This violence brought about
repressive state policies against the civilian population,
which in turn increased the acceptability of such discourses
as “victimhood” and “repression of Kurdish identity” in the
eye of the Kurdish people. By provoking state led violence
and repression against the civilians, PKK emerged as the
defender of grievances and managed to justify its role as
the liberator of Kurdish people. This strategy, while helping
the organization’s survival, nonetheless, had negative
consequences for substantive representation of Kurdish
citizens. When an insurgent organization institutes
A long line of ethnic political parties starting with the
Democratic Society Party (DTP) and today continuing
with the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), mostly served
as interlocutors between the insurgent organization and
the Kurdish constituents. For example, the PKK managed
to manipulate descriptive representation of Kurdish people
to assume the role of the principal in the representational
equation. By consolidating its electoral monopoly on the
Kurdish constituency, the PKK has shifted the object of
“re-election incentive” from the constituents’ interests
to the “goals of PKK leadership,” creating a pattern of
inverse representation. The PKK has also selectively fielded
candidates to exert its control over the possible actions of
to-be-representatives, a particularly effective strategy when
defining the parameters of substantive representation.
Descriptive representatives are “individuals who in their
own backgrounds mirror some of the more frequent
experiences and out-ward manifestations of belonging to
the group” (Mansbridge 1999, p. 628). In this regard, being
a Kurd is sufficient qualification to represent the Kurdish
people. Rather, shared experiences and the ability to relate
to constituents creates the “resemblance clause” essential
for descriptive representation. The insurgent organization
has supported candidates whose personal stories exemplify
the effects of state repression. In other words, shared
experiences of victimized by the state civilians and
representatives created an overlap between descriptive and
substantive representation of the Kurds.
In 1994, Kurdish businessman Savaş Buldan was
abducted and killed. His wife, Pervin Buldan, founded the
Association of Solidarity and Assistance for the Families
of Missing Persons and became highly active against state
repression. She was elected to the parliament to represent
the eastern province of Iğdır in 2007 and was re-elected
in 2011 and 2015. A prominent figure within the Kurdish
political movement and a member of parliament since
2011, Idris Baluken, became active in Kurdish political
scene following his brother’s death during a clash between
52
The Kurdish Question
the security forces and the PKK militants. And many
other candidates and members of parliament – including
Sırrı Sakık, Aysel Tuğluk, and Selahattin Demirtaş – share
stories similar to the life experiences of those who have
been subjected to state repression. These representatives
became embodiments of suppressed Kurdish identity to
substantively represent the Kurdish political cause. They
are deemed fit to represent the Kurdish people because
their stories allow the insurgent organization to create
a sense of belonging among the Kurds. Rather than
using violence and political representation as alternative
strategies, insurgent organization has utilized both. The
end product of this approach has been a shift toward
“inverse representational style” in the name of PKK and
Abdullah Öcalan.
for Kurdish ethno-political mobilization. Such engagement
is an example of extra-parliamentary representation.
Thus, we can argue that Kurdish representatives have
also contributed to various incarnations of deliberative
democracy through civic activism in the midst of conflict.
In conclusion, the analysis of Kurdish representation in
Turkey shows that ethnic movements can use descriptive
representation in conjunction with violent means to
advance their agenda. While serving the goals of insurgent
groups, such strategy however, may undermine the
substantive representation of ethnic minorities in the
presence of recalcitrant nationalist elites. Although it
introduces new opportunities for extra-parliamentary
representation, opening formal representative channels
to ethno-political movements may not necessarily be
conducive to democratization in ethnically divided
societies.
The future of Kurdish representation
Analysis of data drawn from parliamentary questions
and speeches for a larger research project about Kurdish
political representation (Çiftçi and Yıldırım, 2016) reveals
that against all odds, members of parliament from the
pro-Kurdish parties remained active on the floor, in
parliamentary committees, and in the administrative
bodies of the Turkish Grand National Assembly. They
asked many oral and written questions about government
policies, spent considerable time in legislative debates,
and carried substantive discussions in committees during
their tenure. While some of these activities mirrored
the goals and ideology of insurgent organization, others
concerned constituency service and policy goals. The most
important policy areas appear to be about education in
Kurdish language, human rights protection, economic and
social development of Kurdish dominated regions, and
European Union membership. By making their presence
in the parliament known, these representatives expanded
the boundaries of acceptable demands and created de
facto legitimacy for the representation of ethnic interest
against the strong challenge of nationalist elite and the
agenda-setting power of the insurgent organization. When
formal participation channels were closed for Kurdish
members of parliament, as in the current legislative term,
they turned to civil society and assumed the role of agency
References
Alonso, Sonia, and Rubén Ruiz-Rufino. “Political
representation and ethnic conflict in new democracies.”
European Journal of Political Research 46.2 (2007): 237-267.
Barker, Ernest. Reflections on government. Vol. 39.
London: Oxford University Press, 1942.
Griffin, John D. “When and why minority legislators matter.”
Annual Review of Political Science 17 (2014): 327-336.
Çiftçi Sabri and Yıldırım, Tevfik M. “Representation and
Ethnic Conflict: Kurdish Insurgency and Parliamentary
Behavior in Turkey”, Paper Presented at the Annual
Meeting of Middle East Studies Association, Boston, MA,
16-20 November 2016.
Habermas, Jurgen. “Between facts and norms (W. Rehg,
Trans.).” Cambridge: PolityPress (1996).
Mansbridge, Jane. “Should blacks represent blacks and
women represent women? A contingent “yes”.” The Journal
of politics 61.03 (1999): 628-657.
53
Phillips, Anne. Feminism and politics. Oxford University
Press on Demand, 1998.
Urbinati, Nadia, and Mark E. Warren. “The concept of
representation in contemporary democratic theory.” Annu.
Rev. Polit. Sci. 11 (2008): 387-412.
Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. The concept of representation.
Univ of California Press, 1967.
Williams, Melissa S. Voice, trust, and memory:
Marginalized groups and the failings of liberal
representation. Princeton University Press, 2000.
Plotke, David. “Representation is democracy.”
Constellations 4.1 (1997): 19-34.
Tezcür, Güneş Murat. “When democratization radicalizes:
The Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey.” Journal of
Peace Research 47.6 (2010): 775-789.
Counting the Uncounted
Measuring the Politicization of Kurdish Identity in Turkey
Avital Livny, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
The success of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party
(Halkların Demokratik Partisi or HDP) in Turkey’s June
2015 general election came as a considerable surprise,
even among party members. Although some pre-election
polls in late May had the party crossing Turkey’s steep 10
percent electoral threshold, none expected the party to do
as well as it did, winning over 13 percent of the national
vote and securing 80 parliamentary seats. And even with
violent government crackdown in many party strongholds
in the lead-up to the early elections called for November of
that same year, the HDP once again managed to overcome
the threshold, winning 10.8 percent of the national vote
and 59 seats. This string of successes represented a major
change in the electoral performance of pro-Kurdish parties
that, at their best, had captured no more than 5 or 6
percent of the national vote in previous election years.
parties indicate that the size of the Kurdish population
in Turkey has itself increased? Or have Kurdish Turks
becoming increasingly politicized and therefore more
willing to support a pro-Kurdish party? Alternatively,
has the liberal, left-wing political agenda of the party
been increasingly able to win the support of more ethnic
Turks? Tracing such a demographic shift or change in the
relationship between ethnicity and political preferences
would be relatively straightforward in many contexts where
official census data or nationally representative surveys
are available. But in Turkey, information about ethnic
difference is so tightly controlled by the government that
even international surveyors are prohibited from asking
about them, to say nothing of official statistics on ethnicity
which have not been published since 1965.
To fill the information gap, I use nationally representative
survey data on ethnic self-identification and political
preferences to assess patterns at the individual-level and
If we view this as a general trend, a number of questions
naturally follow: Does the rising success of pro-Kurdish
54
The Kurdish Question
in the aggregate, estimating the relative size of the Kurdish
population, across space and across time. Though I find
no recent increase that could account for the success of
Kurdish party politics, I find a steady increase in the percent
of Kurdish voters that express support for pro-Kurdish
parties, alongside a decline in support for these parties
among members of the ethnic Turkish majority. Altogether,
the share of Kurdish voters supporting pro-Kurdish parties
has increased from only 3 percent of the total electorate in
March 2010 to 10.8 percent in September 2015, enough to
just pass the threshold without the support of other voters.
Preliminary evidence indicates that the largest increases in
support came from those Kurds living in districts (ilçeler)
with larger Kurdish populations, indicating targeted
mobilization by party activists.
As a corrective to these existing limitations, I look at
responses to a series of 54 nationally representative faceto-face surveys conducted by KONDA Research and
Consultancy between 2010 and 2015. Altogether, survey
data exist for just under 150,000 respondents from nearly
6000 neighborhoods and villages in 490 districts (ilçeler) in
66 provinces across all 12 of Turkey’s geographical regions.
Consistently across all surveys, respondents are asked a
sensitively-worded subjective question about their ethnic
identity: “We are all citizens of the Republic of Turkey, but
we may have different ethnic roots. As far as you know or
feel, what is your identity?”2In Turkish: “Hepimiz Türkiye
Cumhuriyeti vatandaşıyız, ama değişik etnik kökenlerden
olabiliriz; Siz kendinizi, kimliğinizi ne olarak biliyorsunuz
veya hissediyorsunuz?” Answers are transcribed verbatim
and later coded as either Turkish, Kurdish, Zaza, Arab, or
Other. In addition, respondents are asked how they would
vote if a general election were held tomorrow, with answers
ranging from one of the major political parties to a minor
party or independent candidate to being undecided or
being uninterested in voting at all.
1. Measuring Ethnicity in Contemporary Turkey
Despite their considerable political, economic, and
historical relevance, ethnic differences have largely
been ignored by the Turkish state. While the Ottoman
Empire was known for centuries as a place of pluralism,
coexistence turned to conflict as the empire began to
collapse, and many minority communities emigrated,
whether by choice or by force, in the early decades of the
twentieth century. When the Turkish Republic emerged
from the ashes of the collapsed empire, the mood changed
yet again – a singular focus on the Turkish-Sunni nationstate meant a denial of ethnic and religious differences in
favor of an illusion of homogeneity, resulting in a paucity
of data on identity. Although early Republican censuses
continued the Ottoman tradition of enumerating mother
tongue (a proxy for ethnicity) and religious denomination,
there is some evidence of official manipulation of these
results and, starting in 1965, they ceased being published
altogether. In the absence of official statistics, scholars of
ethnicity in contemporary Turkey have been left to rely on
demographic projections from fifty-year-old censuses and
data on mother tongue from the Demographic and Health
Survey, both of which may introduce some bias into their
estimations of group size.1
Across all respondents, I find that 13.1 percent self-identify
as Kurdish, with considerable sub-national variation
(Figure 1). (Although some provinces (iller) are not
covered in the survey data and, within them, some districts
(ilçeler), there is no systematic pattern to this missingness,
so that the data can be taken as broadly representative.)
Large Kurdish populations have been correctly identified
in much of southeastern Turkey, as well as parts of the
northeast, while urban centers in western and central
Turkey are also identified as having relatively large Kurdish
populations. When I disaggregate the national average
1 While the former makes a number of assumptions about population
growth rates and migratory patterns over a fifty-year period, the latter
– like the official censuses – assumes that mother tongue is the same as
ethnic identity, although it is, at best, only an imperfect proxy.
2 In Turkish: “Hepimiz Türkiye Cumhuriyeti vatandaşıyız, ama
değişik etnik kökenlerden olabiliriz; Siz kendinizi, kimliğinizi ne olarak
biliyorsunuz veya hissediyorsunuz?”
55
across time, I find no indication of an increase in the size
of Turkey’s Kurdish population over the past five years that
might explain the parallel rise in the success of pro-Kurdish
parties (Figure 2). If anything, the only group that appears
to have grown over time is the catch-all “Other” category,
which has seen a slight increase at the expense of selfidentified ethnic Turks.3
3). While only 2.5 percent said that they would support the
BDP in March 2010, 9.9 percent indicated their support
for its successor, the HDP, in September 2015. This is a
considerable increase, especially given the large percentage
of undecided respondents (16.9 percent) and those who say
they would not vote (almost 4 percent).
Disaggregation of this catch-all category indicates that
the increase is not in self-identified Arabs or Zazas but in
those who fall into far smaller categories or who eschew
the use of ethnic categories altogether.
An increase in stated support for pro-Kurdish parties
should alleviate some concerns about response bias,
but it does not address our motivating question: what
explains the rising success of Kurdish-based politics? An
examination of variation in support for Kurdish parties
across ethnic categories over time indicates the surge in
support has come almost entirely from voters who identify
as Kurdish (Figure 4). While support for the BDP and HDP
among Turkish voters has remained consistently small
over time – hovering at or under 1 percent – support for
the pro-Kurdish parties among Kurdish voters has steadily
increased, from under 35.8 percent in March 2010 to
nearly 68.0 percent in September 2015. (There is also some
indication that support for pro-Kurdish parties is growing
among voters who identify as ethnically “Other” – from
0 percent in the earliest surveys to almost 13 percent in
2015 – but the small size of this group – just 5 percent
of the Turkish population – limits the extent to which
this increase could actually influence the outcome of a
general election.) Even without an increase in the relative
size of the Kurdish population, this shift in party support
has meant that Kurdish voter support for Kurdish parties
2. The Rise of Kurdish Political Identity in Turkey
If the relative size of the Kurdish population has not
increased in recent years, how are we to explain the rising
success of pro-Kurdish political parties? One concern is
response bias that is masking a real change in underlying
demographics. If that were the case, stated support for proKurdish parties would likely also be under-reported. But
unlike the relative share of the Kurdish population, levels
of self-reported support for the pro-Kurdish Peace and
Democracy Party (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi or BDP) and
the HDP have steadily increased over time, paralleling the
party’s rising success in local and general elections (Figure
3 Disaggregation of this catch-all category indicates that the increase
is not in self-identified Arabs or Zazas but in those who fall into far
smaller categories or who eschew the use of ethnic categories altogether.
56
The Kurdish Question
doubled from just 4.4 percent of all decided respondents in
2010 to 8.8 percent in 2015.
including the estimated size of the Kurdish population in
the respondent’s home district – and bivariate indicators
of each survey year after 2010. Most remarkable, perhaps,
is what I did not find: the impact of individual-level
demographic characteristics on Kurdish voters’ preference
for pro-Kurdish parties has remained entirely stable over
time. Age, gender and education impact their preference
for pro-Kurdish parties in the same way in 2015 as they
did in every previous year. The only significant pattern
is the importance of local demographics to individual
vote-choices: among Kurdish voters, the relative size of
the Kurdish population in their home district boosts their
level of support for pro-Kurdish parties in all years, but
the magnitude of this positive effect increases over time,
especially after 2011 (Figure 6).
So what explains this increase? One possibility is that
a demographic shift within the Kurdish population
has increased the extent to which Kurdish identity is
politicized. Across all respondents, I find greater support
for pro-Kurdish parties among younger male voters who
are relatively undereducated. If the Kurdish population
has become increasingly younger, increasingly less
educated or if there has been a shift in its gender balance,
demographics might be able to explain the change over
time. I account for this possibility by running multivariate
regressions of pro-Kurdish party support including basic
demographic characteristics – age, gender, and education
– and bivariate indicators of Kurdish and Turkish ethnicity
for each year in the dataset. A plot of the ethnicity
coefficients over time (Figure 5) reveals that the impact of
Turkish ethnicity on pro-Kurdish party support rose and
then fell, while the magnitude of the Kurdish coefficient
has almost monotonically increased, even after controlling
for demographic differences.
To understand what factors have become increasingly
important in determining Kurdish voters’ support for
pro-Kurdish parties, I ran a number of regression models
of party preferences among survey respondents who selfidentify as Kurdish. In each, I included interaction between
a given variable – individual demographics, including
age, gender and education, as well as geographic ones,
57
Conclusion
This interaction effect largely explains the increase in proKurdish party support over time, although there remains a
positive intercept shift in 2015. Further, these interaction
effects are robust to the inclusion of fixed effects at the
region- (bölge) and province-level, indicating that this is
more about local environment than geographic variation.
Still the reasons for the increasing importance of local
demographics remains unclear: it is possible that HDP
officials are targeting their mobilization efforts in the most
heavily Kurdish areas; alternatively, it may be that Kurdish
voters most open to pro-Kurdish politics are choosing
to live in areas where they constitute a large share of the
population. Using information about survey respondents’
birth province, as well as their father’s birth province,
I am able to test for this type of a sorting mechanism.
Controlling for respondents’ current home province, I
find that internal migration has a direct positive effect
on Kurdish support for pro-Kurdish parties but that this
effect has decreased over time, evidence against a sorting
mechanism.
Using new data on ethnic identification and political
preferences in Turkey, I am able to confirm that the
recent rise in pro-Kurdish politics is the result not of
an underlying demographic shift nor of the increasing
support of ethnic Turks. Instead, it appears that the
ethnic identity of Kurdish voters in Turkey has become
increasingly politicized in recent years, especially in areas
with larger Kurdish populations. It is clear, therefore, that
ethnic demography is becoming increasingly important in
Turkish politics, a trend that warrants more attention from
country specialists.
58
The Kurdish Question
Why did the PKK declare Revolutionary People’s War in July 2015?
By Şener Aktürk, Koç University, Istanbul
On July 11, 2015, KCK, a political umbrella organization
for the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), declared an end to
the ceasefire with Turkey due to the hydroelectric “dams
being built for a military purpose” by the Turkish state
(T24 2015). Three days later, Bese Hozat (2015), the cochair of the KCK, published an op-ed in Özgür Gündem,
the semiofficial newspaper of the PKK, titled, “The new
process is Revolutionary People’s War,” where she declared
the beginning of the PKK’s offensive. What followed was
the most violent episode of uninterrupted fighting between
the PKK and the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) since the
1990s, compounded with frequent suicide bombing attacks
that hit civilians in major urban centers such as Istanbul,
Ankara, Bitlis, Bursa, Elazığ and Van, among others. The
violence between the PKK and TAF that began in July 2015
has been continuing as of this writing in October 2016.
are based on Turkey’s domestic politics, whereas the latter
two explanations are based on Turkey’s foreign policy
vis-à-vis Syria. Except for the third hypothesis, these
hypotheses cover possible short-term, proximate causes of
the PKK’s offensive, and thus do not include any long-term,
structural reasons that may explain why the PKK has been
at war against Turkey for the last three decades. Longterm, structural reasons that are not specific to 2015 may
give some insights about the nature of the conflict but they
cannot explain why the largest PKK offensive in the last 15
years occurred in July 2015. In other words, this brief piece
seeks to uncover the immediate, short-term “trigger” that
led to the PKK offensive in July 2015.
Hypothesis 1: HDP-PKK Rivalry
First, the spectacular and unprecedented surge of the
HDP in Turkey’s June 2015 elections may have threatened
to undo the unofficial subordination of the legal political
party, HDP, to the illegal PKK. This rivalry potentially
motivated the PKK to launch its largest offensive in
more than a decade as a show of force vis-à-vis Kurds
and non-Kurds alike including the HDP. Among many
leftist columnists, opinion leaders, and politicians, Kemal
Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the main opposition party,
Kemalist CHP, explicitly stated that “PKK is aiming to
keep HDP out of the parliament” (Habertürk 2015) by
launching this offensive. There is some evidence to support
this hypothesis. In an op-ed published in PKK’s Özgür
Gündem in August 2015, Duran Kalkan, a member of the
PKK executive committee, listed the faults of the HDP
and called on the party to engage in self-criticism on
these issues (Diken 2015). PKK’s sporadic criticisms of
the HDP continued after the November 2015 elections.
For example, KCK co-chair Cemil Bayik claimed right
after HDP’s election victory that, “if it wasn’t for us [i.e.,
KCK-PKK], HDP could not even garner 5% [of the vote]”
(AlJazeera Turk 2015). Despite Bayik’s (and PKK’s) claims,
let me briefly note that HDP’s popular base is greater
than the sympathizers of the PKK, and it includes a
Why did the PKK declare “Revolutionary People’s War” in
July 2015? This is a genuine puzzle of the highest order for
both political scientists and policy makers alike, since the
political historical significance of the spiral of violence that
began in July 2015 cannot be overstated. PKK’s decision
to go to war is a significant puzzle at least for two primary
reasons. First, based on the progress Turkey made in terms
of ethno-linguistic rights for the Kurds under the AK
Party governments, such as Kurdish public television and
Kurdish languages as elective courses in public schools
(Akturk 2012), one may not expect the PKK to launch a
major offensive that could be very difficult to justify to its
Kurdish recruiting base. Second, based on the meteoric
rise of the pro-PKK, socialist Peoples’ Democratic Party
(Halkların Demokratik Partisi or HDP), one would think
that the PKK would like to capitalize on this election
victory and leverage the political clout rather than launch a
major offensive likely to marginalize it.
In this brief memo, I posit five explanations for the PKK’s
decision that are seemingly logical at a very basic level,
then scrutinize each by using publicly available data that
challenge or corroborate it. The first three explanations
59
significant share of Kurdish and non-Kurdish socialists,
as well as some liberals, and even Islamic conservatives.
Thus, PKK sympathizers are but a subset, albeit the most
demographically significant, of HDP supporters.
himself explicitly stated (IMC 2015). However, PKK
is likely to have disagreed with this line of argument,
instead seeing the swelling of electoral support for the
HDP as an endorsement of the PKK, as Cemil Bayik’s
statement quoted earlier (AlJazeera Turk 2015) also
corroborates. In that case, PKK may have sought to utilize
the mobilizational success achieved during the election
cycle for the purposes of its violent insurgency. Lending
credence to this claim is the empirical observation that
there has been a somewhat regular spike in PKK attacks
around the 2007 general elections (Tezcür 2009, p.781),
and 2011 general elections (Çağaptay 2013), the two
preceding electoral cycles.
What makes this hypothesis ultimately unconvincing
is the virtual absence of any direct condemnation or
criticism coming from the HDP against the PKK, which, if
it existed, could substantiate the alleged aspiration of the
HDP to free itself from the yoke of the PKK. Even when
the PKK detonated 15 tons of explosives killing 16 Kurdish
civilians, including teenagers (BBC 2015; Sabah 2015), the
HDP did not condemn the PKK for its actions. The HPD
had 80 members of the parliament (MPs) after June 2015
elections, and 59 MPs after the November 2015 elections.
Not a single one resigned from the party to protest PKK’s
Revolutionary People’s War, or the HDP’s silence vis-à-vis
PKK’s new offensive, which increasingly included urban
terrorism that killed many civilians. The only notable HDP
representative who openly criticized PKK was a former
political Islamist, Altan Tan, who was then criticized for
his criticisms. Thus, this hypothesis relies on a secret if not
wishful/imaginary split between the PKK and the HDP,
explaining PKK’s offensive as an attempt to discipline
and subordinate the HDP, whereas no publicly available
evidence shows HDP’s insubordination to, let alone
conflict with, the PKK. In contrast, one can also plausibly argue that both the
magnitude of the PKK offensive in July 2015, which
was unprecedented since the 1990s (before Abdullah
Ocalan’s capture in 1999), and the fact that it did not
subside but rather increased after the end of the second
general election in (November) 2015, both challenge the
plausibility of this hypothesis. Moreover, HDP lost more
than a million votes, and its national vote declined from
13.1 to 10.7 percent in just over three months after the
PKK’s offensive began. Thus, the end of the election cycle,
if not the especially precipitous fall in the HDP votes,
should have also led to PKK’s demobilization, if violence
was indeed caused primarily by Turkish election cycles.
Hypothesis 2: Mobilizational Spillover
Hypothesis 3: Government Inaction
Second, and based on an assumption that is almost exact
opposite of the first hypothesis, one can argue that the
PKK interpreted the historic electoral highpoint of the
HDP as a popular mandate for a revolutionary insurrection
to establish a Kurdish socialist state. This may be a radical
misinterpretation of the reasons why six million people
voted for the HDP in June 2015, since many explicitly
justified their endorsement of the HDP by arguing that
strong electoral support for the HDP would strengthen
the party and weaken the PKK and end to its decadeslong violent armed struggle. “Supporting HDP in order
to pacify PKK” was perhaps the most popular argument
in favor of endorsing the HDP prior to the June 2015
elections, as the leader of the HDP, Selahattin Demirtaş
Third, government (re)action, or rather government
inaction, in the face of PKK demands for power sharing
over the years could be posited as a reason for the
beginning of the PKK offensive in July 2015. After all, in
the declaration ending the ceasefire in July 11, 2015, in
addition to “dams being built for a military purpose,” the
PKK also accused Turkish government of committing a
“political genocide” against it. Kurdish socialist HDP and
the AK Party government in Turkey fiercely compete for
the ethnic Kurdish vote, and in certain electoral cycles
such as in 2007, AK Party received significantly more
Kurdish votes than the Kurdish socialist parties, which
could be interpreted as a “political genocide” by the PKK.
However, the June 2015 election would have been the
60
The Kurdish Question
least supportive of this argument since HDP received the
highest number and percentage of votes of any Kurdish
socialist party in history. Although the Turkish government
refuses to enter into some kind of a power-sharing
agreement with the PKK, this refusal is not new, since
numerous Turkish governments over the last 32 years all
refused to enter into any formal power sharing agreement
with the PKK. Such a refusal now would not distinguish
July 2015 from any other period in the last three decades.
myth in the domestic and international PKK propaganda
lends credence to this hypothesis as does the mobilization
of numerous socialist (Kurdish and non-Kurdish) militants
within Turkey, who traveled to Syria to join the PYD.
Indeed, the Turkish military was primarily occupied with
fighting the PKK between July 2015 and July 2016, and
was only able to launch an incursion into northern Syria in
late August 2016. This one-year period gave the PYD the
opportunity to consolidate and even expand its territorial
control across much of northern Syria.
These three hypotheses provide domestic level explanations
for the PKK’s decision to end ceasefire and launch
Revolutionary People’s War in the first half of July 2015.
Hypothesis 5: the Russian-Iranian Axis
However, one can also posit at least two different but
related international level explanations for the PKK’s critical
decision in this historical juncture, both of which relate to
the developments in the Syrian civil war at the time.
Fifth, there may have been a tacit mutual understanding,
or perhaps a secret agreement, among Russia, Iran, the
Assad regime, and the PYD earlier in 2015. Although
unbeknownst to almost everyone, including many Russia
observers, Russia had been planning to militarily intervene
in Syria, which it eventually did in September 2015. In
preparation for this intervention, Russia, Iran, and the
regime may have struck a deal with the PYD-PKK, in
which the PKK would launch a major offensive within
Turkey to prevent the Turkish military from intervening in
Syria before or during the initial stages of the impending
Russian intervention. The rapid escalation of tensions
between Russia and Turkey after the Russian intervention
in Syria, which culminated in Turkey shooting down a
Russian bomber in November 24, 2015, and was followed
by increased Russian military and political support for the
PYD, all lend credence to this hypothesis. This hypothesis
is also theoretically consistent with the arguments found
in international relations scholarship that emphasizes the
critical role of external patrons of terrorist organizations
(San-Akca 2016) or insurgent ethnic groups (Mylonas
Hypothesis 4: the PYD State
Fourth explanation for the PKK’s decision to end the
ceasefire and launch its offensive in July 2015 would be the
protection of the de facto state that has been established by
the PYD in northeastern Syria. PYD is the Syrian branch
of the PKK (Aktürk 2016). There was a brief period of
rapprochement between Turkey and the PYD leadership.
For example, PYD leader Salih Muslim visited Ankara in
October 2014 (AlJazeera Turk 2014) and soon thereafter
Turkey facilitated the passage of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga
through Turkey to Kobane, which was critical in defeating
the ISIS assault on that city. However, this ambiguous
episode was the exception rather than the rule in TurkishPYD relations, and Turkey has been steadfastly against the
consolidation of PYD power in northern Syria since then.
Moreover, in the spring and early summer of 2015, the
Turkish-backed Syrian opposition was advancing against
the Assad regime forces. Thus, the critical period between
the June and November 2015 elections, when Turkey only
had a provisional government and intermittent coalition
negotiations, presented a window of opportunity for the
PKK to launch a preemptive attack against Turkey in order
to safeguard the existence of the PYD state in northern
Syria, or Rojava (literally translated as “the West,” meaning
Western Kurdistan). Elevation of the “Rojava Revolution”
2012). In just a couple of months in late 2015, Russian
intervention was able to reverse the decline of the Assad
regime, and change the military strategic calculus against
the Syrian opposition forces backed by Turkey.
What can we learn from counterfactuals?
Counterfactuals are useful if not necessary in the absence
of real experiments in the social sciences. In an effort to
summarize the five hypotheses outlined in this brief memo,
61
References
one can summarize each in the form of a counterfactual
question and posit a tentative answer on the basis of what
we know from publicly available sources. Would the PKK
launch its July 2015 offensive in the absence of the HDP’s
historically high polling in the June 2015 elections? Would
the PKK launch its offensive if the HDP demonstrated
unswerving and indisputable obedience to the PKK? My
answer to each of these questions would be a tentative
“yes.” Would the PKK launch its offensive if Turkey
unofficially recognized and even supported the PYD state
in Syria? I think the answer to that question is “almost
certainly no,” because such recognition would provide
the PKK leadership and the rank-and-file both a symbolic
and a substantive victory in achieving their ultimate goal
of creating a Kurdish socialist state in the Middle East,
and hence would justify extending the ceasefire with
Turkey. Finally, if Turkey struck a deal with Russia, Iran,
and even the Assad regime itself, about the future of Syria
that envisioned shrinking the territory controlled by the
PYD, would the PKK launch its offensive? My answer
would be, “possibly yes, but with much greater difficulty,”
because the PKK is not an actor that is entirely or primarily
subservient to the Iranian-Syrian geopolitical axis, as some
Turkish observers seem to think. The PKK could launch an
offensive against Turkey, as long as it felt the PYD entity in
Syria or the PKK’s position within Turkey were threatened,
even if Turkey mended its relations with Russia, Iran,
or the Assad regime in Syria, which are considered
geopolitical patrons of the PKK at one time or another.
Akturk, Sener. 2012. Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationhood
in Germany, Russia, and Turkey. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Aktürk, Şener. 2016. “The PKK and PYD’s Kurdish Soviet
Experiment in Syria and Turkey.” Daily Sabah, January
27, 2016, retrieved from http://www.dailysabah.com/
op-ed/2016/01/27/the-pkk-and-pyds-kurdish-sovietexperiment-in-syria-and-turkey
AlJazeera Turk. 2014. “PYD lideri Ankara’da.” AlJazeera
Turk, October 4, 2014, retrieved from http://www.
aljazeera.com.tr/haber/pyd-lideri-ankarada
AlJazeera Turk. 2015. “Biz olmasak HDP %5 alamazdi.”
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www.aljazeera.com.tr/haber/biz-olmasak-hdp-5-alamazdi
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PKK’dan özür bekliyoruz.” BBC Türkçe, May 20,
2016, retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/turkce/
haberler/2016/05/160519_diyarbakir_koyluler
Çağaptay, Soner. 2013. “Syria’s War Affecting Turkey in
Unexpected Ways.” Washington Institute PolicyWatch
2027, January 29, 2013, retrieved from http://www.
washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/syrias-waraffecting-turkey-in-unexpected-ways
In short, PKK’s fateful decision to end the ceasefire and
launch Revolutionary People’s War against Turkey in the
first half of July 2015 had enormous social and political
consequences that cannot be overstated. Despite its
significance, however, the cause(s) that motivated this
critical decision have not been systematically studied and
scrutinized. In this brief memo I formulated five potentially
plausible hypotheses based on some of the popularly
cited reasons for the PKK offensive in order explain this
decision, and discussed some of the claims in favor and
against them.
Diken. 2015. “PKK yöneticisi Duran Kalkan HDP’nin
yaptığı ‘hata’ları saydı, ‘özeleştiri’ye çağırdı.” Diken, August
31, 2015, retrieved from http://www.diken.com.tr/pkkyoneticisi-duran-kalkan-hdpnin-yaptigi-hatalari-saydiozelestiriye-cagirdi/
Habertürk. 2015. “Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu: PKK, HDP’yi baraj
altında bırakmak istiyor.” Habertürk, September 25, 2015,
retrieved from http://www.haberturk.com/gundem/
haber/1132647-kemal-kilicdaroglu-pkk-hdpyi-barajaltinda-birakmak-istiyor
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The Kurdish Question
Hozat, Bese. 2015. “Yeni süreç, devrimci halk savaşı
sürecidir.” Özgür Gündem, July 14, 2015, retrieved from
http://www.ozgur-gundem.com/yazi/133642/yeni-surecdevrimci-halk-savasi-surecidir
San-Akca, Belgin. 2016. States in Disguise: Causes of State
Support for Rebel Groups. New York: Oxford University
Press.
T24. 2015. “KCK ateşkesin bittiğini açıkladı: Bundan sonra
tüm barajlar gerillanın hedefinde olacaktır.” July 11, 2015,
retrieved from http://t24.com.tr/haber/kck-ateskesinbittigini-acikladi-bundan-sonra-tum-barajlar-gerillaninhedefinde-olacaktir,302608
IMC. 2015. “PKK’ye silah bıraktıracak olan HDP’dir, AKP
değil.” March 1, 2015, retrieved from http://imc-tv.net/
pkkye-silah-biraktiracak-olan-hdpdir-akp-degil/
Mylonas, Harris. 2012. The Politics of Nation-Building:
Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minorities. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Tezcür, Güneş Murat. 2010. “When Democratization
Radicalizes? The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in Turkey.”
Journal of Peace Research 47, no.6: 775-89.
Sabah, 2016. “PKK’nın son büyük sivil katliamı: Dürümlü.”
Sabah, May 17, 2016, retrieved from http://www.sabah.
com.tr/gundem/2016/05/17/pkknin-son-buyuk-sivilkatliami-durumlu
Politics of Confinement:
Curfews and Civilian Control in Turkish Counterinsurgency
By Aysegul Aydin & Cem Emrence, University of Colorado-Boulder, Leiden University
Following his visit to Turkey on April 14, 2016, the
Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights,
Nils Muižnieks, reported that, “round-the-clock, openended and increasingly long curfews declared in entire
neighborhoods or cities in South-Eastern Turkey” have
been the defining feature of counterinsurgency operations
since July 2015. In response to the renewed conflict in
Kurdish areas in the wake of the June 2015 election, the
AKP government launched a massive campaign of curfews
in city centers. The duration of the curfews ranged from
several days to several weeks with the longest one in the
Cizre district of Sirnak, lasting nine months, the first 79
days of which civilians were confined 24 hours a day.
Curfews were population control measures. They targeted
civilians by suspending individual rights and freedoms and
resulted in hundreds of deaths, displaced thousands, and
destroyed whole towns. In terms of its effect on civilian
populations, this episode of Turkish counterinsurgency
remains unprecedented in the long history of the Kurdish
conflict. Human rights organizations report that curfews
affected more than one million residents and led to the
displacement of an estimated 100,000 civilians. Turkey
Human Rights Organization (TIHV) estimates that
321 civilians died, mostly because of lack of access to
emergency care and by fire from armored vehicles. Use of
heavy weaponry in populated settings led to the complete
destruction of city centers. In Sirnak alone, 9 of 12
63
neighborhoods were wiped out leading to the demolition
of an estimated 7,000 buildings.
These curfews escaped the scrutiny of the Turkish
parliament. Unlike previous emergency rule legislations
that had to be approved by the Turkish Grand National
Assembly according to the Turkey’s 1982 Constitution,
curfews were announced by province and sub-province
governors with no legislative or judiciary oversight. Basing
their decision on the Provincial Administration Law,
local bureaucrats took advantage of a legal framework
that does not even mention curfews and therefore lacks
the safeguards of the Constitution (Venice Commission).
This strategy allowed the counterinsurgent to suspend
constitutional rights of citizens without justifying its
decision to the public and international audiences. The
AKP government argued that governors should have
jurisdiction over curfews because they are in a better
position to evaluate the security threats in their areas and
respond accordingly. Ironically, however, the wording of
curfew announcements in different districts was almost
identical, indicating the possibility that governors were
simply implementing the government’s priorities.
Second, PKK’s increasing control in urban areas was not
a new development. Self-rule announcements by HDP
representatives and PKK affiliates were only the final step
in PKK’s urban encroachment. If curfews responded to
self-rule attempts, why did the counterinsurgent wait
until October? All self-rule announcements were made in
mid-August, in celebration of the PKK’s 31st anniversary.
There were also other districts with self-rule declarations,
fifteen in total, where no curfew was ordered. For instance,
the Başkale district in Van provided all the justifications for
the counterinsurgent to impose a curfew, but the governor
carefully avoided one.
The curious timing and distribution of curfews in southeast
Anatolia raises critical questions. Our data on 113 districts
in the southeast corner of Turkey – previously known
as OHAL Bolgesi, State of Emergency zone – show that
neither the distribution of insurgent attacks nor of self-rule
announcements by movement activists seems to explain
which cities were put on lockdown. First, the timing and
geographical coverage of insurgent attacks hardly justify
the argument that curfews were a military necessity. A
closer look shows that of the 25 districts that received 70
percent of all insurgent attacks between the two elections in
2015, only eight were subject to curfew and experienced 29
percent of total attacks. Similarly, a biweekly classification
of insurgent attacks starting by July 20 and ending on
the day of the snap election in November, shows that by
October 3, 95 percent of all insurgent attacks were over.
However, curfews were slowly picking up pace. Forty
percent of all curfew announcements came after October 3,
and the duration of curfews increased over time.
If not insurgency or autonomy demands, then what drove
Turkish counterinsurgency measures in this episode?
Scholars working on the determinants of electoral support
in Turkey mainly looked at the effect of PKK attacks but
failed to account for incumbent violence (Kibris 2011). Our
argument benefits from the literature on political violence
and elections. Wilkinson (2004), for instance, shows that
in localities characterized by close electoral races, the
incumbent can mobilize its constituencies by instigating
or refusing to intervene in communal violence. Evidence
from the Turkish case supports this point and also presents
several novelties. The main distinguishing characteristic
of the Turkish experience was that curfews were adopted
as part of a counterinsurgency campaign that targeted
areas where the Kurdish mass party has a significant
following. Organic ties between the HDP and the insurgent
organization allowed the counterinsurgent to legitimately
make the argument that party strongholds were also
terrorist hideouts.
64
The Kurdish Question
Considering their dramatic effect on civilian populations,
do curfews involve any political costs for the Turkish
government? At first look, the political consequences of
curfews are hardly surprising. Urban voters in curfew
settings punished the AKP and rewarded the HDP.
Incumbent losses were substantial at the district level (5.4
percentage points) when curfew districts are compared
to non-curfew districts. If curfews as a counterinsurgency
policy backfired politically, then why did the government
use them extensively? Most important, curfews were a
political instrument. The incumbent used information
from the June election to detect political preferences, then
used repression selectively to punish pro-HDP districts
province has been relegated to the status of a district to
discourage investment with tax breaks and limit economic
opportunities for would-be residents. The dense social ties
in close-knit neighborhoods that were once utilized by
movement activists to spread the word were destroyed to
prevent political mobilization.
and reward pro-AKP districts (Dunning 2011). Districts
that received curfews were in which the ethnic party
received at least 50 percent of the valid vote. Accordingly,
all districts (n=12) where curfews were announced in
urban areas emerged as HDP strongholds in the June
election. In fact, 9 of the 12 curfew districts were among
the 22 urban areas where the incumbent party received
the fewest votes in June. Therefore, the incumbent had no
realistic expectations from these areas in the November
2015 election.
behind curfew ordinances. The region is characterized by
a few populous central districts and several districts with
few residents. Accordingly, the fifteen districts with the
largest number of registered voters in the June election
are home to roughly half of all registered voters in the
region. Thirteen districts in this group are central districts,
which are province centers or central districts carved from
province centers of Van, Mardin and Diyarbakır. These
vote-rich districts determined the outcome of the election
and held the key to electoral victory in the snap election.
Curfews were the perfect instrument to reduce support for
the ethnic party. Restrictions led to an average decrease
of 3.5 percent in turnout. With the breakdown of peace
negotiations in July, the government implemented
scorched earth counterinsurgency tactics. Destruction of
neighborhoods during urban warfare forced residents to
leave, and resettlement was discouraged. Civilians were
barred from entering partially destroyed buildings or fixing
their property. Remaining buildings were confiscated and
handed over to the Housing Development Administration.
Governors refrained from invoking a curfew in the 15
vote-rich districts despite the fact they received a fair
share of insurgent violence (Map 1). Of this group, six
were among the top 25 targets of the insurgency. Voterich districts accounted for 17 percent of insurgent attacks
and 12 percent of security casualties in urban settings.
Populated localities were neither peaceful havens nor
hotbeds of insurgency. Yet the government’s response was
unexpected. Despite the tough talk on PKK violence and
harsh counterinsurgency measures elsewhere, population
Those who stayed were uneasily confined by open-ended
curfews and feared to leave their homes to go to the ballot
box. Homeless residents were left to fend for themselves
with no relocation opportunities or reimbursement of
housing costs. In one of these extreme measures, Sirnak
control was out of question in highly populated vote-rich
Bağlar district of Diyarbakır. In other words, curfews
bypassed these districts altogether in order to secure an
electoral victory in the November election.
By contrast, in areas where political expectations were
involved, the government was careful not to alienate
civilians. When forced to choose between military
priorities and electoral calculations, the government’s
answer was obvious. The intricacies of electoral geography
in southeast Turkey expose the political motivations
65
Note: The map treats central districts of Diyarbakir, Van and Mardin as single units. Three central districts, two in
Diyarbakir and one in Van, experienced curfews. Since curfews and vote-rich districts do not overlap, this does not change our
conclusions.
A comparison of district level vote shares in June and
November elections strongly suggests that the incumbent’s
political calculation paid off. Not experiencing civilian
control measures, vote-rich districts awarded the
government party substantial support: 56 percent of
all AKP gains (187,957 votes) in southeast Turkey in
November came from these fifteen districts. This subregional trend translated into a major loss for the HDP,
corresponding to 48 percent of all HDP losses (133,533
votes) in the election. In sum, counterinsurgency tactics
that exploited the divisions within the Kurdish society
between conservatives and ethnicists worked to increase
electoral support for the government. Whether civilians
in these settings approved violence or hid their true
preferences to avoid being the victim of the next military
campaign remains a question. Elections only present an
aggregate way to examine political preferences. Despite
such limitations, election results may perhaps be our only
gateway to civilians’ attitudes and their transformation
in war zones. In the Turkish context, evidence strongly
suggests that, if skillfully crafted to reward supporters and
punish the opposition, selective repression may deliver
major political dividends for the incumbent in institutional
politics.
66
The Kurdish Question
Foreign Fighters from Turkey
Güneş Murat Tezcür, Jalal Talabani Endowed Chair of Kurdish Political Studies, University of Central Florida
Introduction
in Turkey. 1 In turn, Kurds from Turkey have fought against
the Iranian regime since 2004 and have participated in
the Syrian civil war since 2012. More than fifty percent of
the 123 PJAK (Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê, a PKKaffiliated Kurdish organization based primarily in Iran)
militants who lost their lives fighting the Islamic Republic
of Iran between 2005 and June 2016 were actually Turkish
citizens. Thousands of young individuals from Turkey
traveled to Syria to fight in the ranks of YPG (Yekîneyên
Parastina Gel), a Kurdish militia force with extensive
linkages to the PKK, since 2012.
One of the effects of the Syrian civil war on Turkey has
been the significant rise in the number of foreign fighters
from this country. While Turkish citizens have traveled to
foreign lands and fought in the “wars of others” since at
least the early 1970s, the scope and pace of foreign fighter
mobilization since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war has
been unprecedented. These fighters primarily pursued
two opposing ideological goals, risking their lives to take
arms either for religious (i.e., ummah and caliphate) or
nationalist (i.e., Kurdistan) political projects. Demographic
analysis of hundreds of these fighters sheds some light on
exactly who these individuals are, where they come from
and how they differ from those who left Turkey to fight
a generation ago. It also provides some insights about the
motives of these individuals. As some of these individuals
return after conflict abroad – at times with deadly
consequences – understanding these motivations becomes
increasingly important.
The Turkish government’s decision to start negotiations
with the PKK leadership in early 2013 decreased the
fatalities due to armed clashes to their lowest level since
the early 2000s. However, this temporary lull in violence
was undermined after the self-styled Islamic State (IS)
besieged the border town of Kobanî in the de facto
autonomous Kurdish region of Syria, Rojava, in fall 2014.
I have identified 706 Turkish citizens who fought in the
ranks of the YPG against jihadist groups and were killed in
Syria between July 2013 and September 2016.2 While some
of the individuals were seasoned militants who joined
the PKK many years ago, others were fresh recruits who
directly joined the YPG. Overall, Kurdish youth fighting
in Rojava do not seem to have significantly different
characteristics than Kurdish youth fighting against the
Turkish security forces, blurring the distinction between
Kurdish foreign fighters and insurgents.
Fighting for Kurdistan
The armed struggle between the Turkish state and the PKK
(Partiya Karkarên Kurdistan, or the Kurdistan Worker’s
Party) is one of the longest lasting ethnic conflicts of
contemporary times. Two factors have contributed to the
resiliency of the PKK over more than three decades. First,
access to safe havens in neighboring countries allow it to
train military forces, support a reserve of fighters, and
regroup after periods of defeat and disunity. Next, the PKK
is a transnational ethno-nationalist insurgency with strong
appeal among not only Kurds of Turkey but also Kurds
in the neighboring countries and the Kurdish Diaspora
in Europe. In particular, a large number of Syrian and
Iranian Kurds have lost their lives fighting security forces
An overwhelming majority of these fighters were single
1 At least 20 percent of the deceased PKK fighters were born in
Syria, Iran, or Iraq. These numbers come from the Kurdish Insurgency
Militants (KIM) dataset that is available at www.tezcur.org. For a
comprehensive study of PKK militants, see Güneş Murat Tezcür,
“Ordinary People, Extraordinary Risks: Participation in an Ethnic
Rebellion,” American Political Science Review 110 (May 2016): 247-64.
2 The information is obtained from various Kurdish and Turkish
news agencies (i.e., Ajansa Nûçeyan a Firatê) in addition to the YPG
official website (http://ypgrojava.com/ku/index.php/y-daxuyani/menushowcase/y-sehidenme).
67
men and women in teens or twenties suggesting the
importance of biographical availability for recruitment.
More than 40 percent came from only three provinces:
Diyarbakır, the most populous Kurdish majority province
in the country; Şırnak, a mountainous province just across
the Iraqi Kurdistan; and Mardin, just north of the Kurdish
controlled Hasakah region of Syria. As shown in Table 1,
these three provinces have exhibited strong support for
the Kurdish nationalist movement for many years. They
have had the highest numbers of PKK recruits too. The
images of Kurdish women waging an existential fight
are widely circulated in media outlets globally and have
bolstered the Kurdish nationalist claim as an effective force
facing jihadist extremism in Syria.3 Around 21 percent
of the deceased YPG fighters from Turkey are women, a
ratio higher than that of among deceased PKK fighters (14
percent for the 1976-2012 period).
Table 1. Kurdish and Islamist Foreign Fighters from Turkey
The armed struggle in Rojava has also attracted individuals
with disparate levels of education and prospects of social
mobility. For example, Rizgar – who had a journalism
degree from the Istanbul University and interned at a
popular independent media network – lost his life during
the siege of Kobanî in October 2014. At the same time,
many individuals with limited educational endowments
also joined the ranks of YPG. Arjin migrated to Istanbul
with her family at the age of four and had an arranged
marriage with a relative at the age of 21. Yet she left her
husband after three years and traveled to Syria in July 2014.
Three months later, she staged a suicide attack in a street
battle with the IS forces in Kobanî. Others survived the
fighting with the IS and returned to Turkey after the restart
of violence in summer 2015. Roza, a villager with primary
school education, joined the PKK in 2009 when she was
23 years old. She also participated in the battle of Kobanî
as a sniper. She survived the battle and returned to Turkey,
fought and died in the battle of Sur, the historic center of
Diyarbakır, in February 2016.
Fighting for Ummah and Caliphate
YPG
Jihadists
147 females (21%) &
559 males
9 females (4%) &
229 males
Provinces with the highest number of fighters (in %)
Diyarbakir
18
Adıyaman
10
Şırnak
13
Konya
10
Mardin
10
Ankara
8
Hakkari
8.5
Gaziantep
7
Van
8
Bingöl
7
Turkish citizens have been fighting in the ranks of Islamist
groups in foreign lands since the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in the 1980s. At least several thousands have
traveled to all over the world including Bosnia, Chechnya,
Iraq, and Ethiopia to participate in jihadist campaigns.
The outbreak of the Syrian civil war, however, led to a
huge increase in the number of Turkish citizens joining
Salafi-jihadist organizations such as the IS and al-Nusra
in Syria.4 Two factors have contributed to this spike in
jihadist foreign fighters from Turkey: a) the feasibility and
ease of traveling to Syria until recently, and b) widespread
moral outrage in response to stories and images of Muslim
suffering in Syria.
I have assembled an original sample of 458 Turkish citizens
who traveled abroad and fought with jihadist groups
since the Afghan civil war in the 1980s. I have employed
4 According to a police report dating from April 2016, around 2,750
Turkish citizens joined the Salafi-jihadist organizations in Syria.
Reported by Turkish dailies Hürriyet, April 25, 2016. Available at http://
www.hurriyet.com.tr/iste-emniyetin-selefi-raporu-turkiye-tabanlari20-bine-ulasti-bu-bir-tehdit-40094417. and Yeni Hayat, May 11, 2016.
Available at https://www.yenihayatgazetesi.com/isid-hucrelerlebuyuyor-9537.
3 For instance, see https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/30/
kurdish-women-died-kobani-isis-syria & http://www.marianne.net/
reportage-au-kurdistan-irakien-les-combattantes-yezidies-100242905.
html.
68
The Kurdish Question
triangulation and consulted diverse sources including
news reports, social media accounts, and Islamist forums.
Of these individuals, 238 fought in Syria since 2012, and
the remaining 220 participated in the previous wars. Two
interesting patterns emerge from a comparison of these
religious foreign fighters. First, the new generation of
fighters traveling from Turkey is younger and less likely
to have a prior experience of political mobilization than
previous generation of fighters. The Syrian jihad has
attracted a broader demographic group than previous
jihadist struggles. Additionally, IS recruitment is especially
strong among individuals with no history of previous
Islamic activism. It seems that the IS’s uncompromising,
puritan, and highly reductionist ideology appeals to
individuals whose religious knowledge and training
is limited. These individuals are likely to lack Islamic
knowledge and socialization to critically engage with the
takfiri ideology propagated by the IS. These observations
are consistent with widespread reports that the Syrian
civil war and the rise of the IS have broadened the reach of
jihadism among new types of individuals.5
educational attainments, 67 of 151 jihadists (around 44
percent) whose educational levels are known have at least
some college education. Similarly, many Turkish citizens
joining the YPG are college students. In comparison,
only around 15 percent of all Turkish citizens had college
degrees in 2015. While the limited availability of data
decreases the reliability of inferences, there is no evidence
that religious and ethno-nationalist foreign fighters from
Turkey come from less educated segments of the society,
a finding consistent with scholarship that debunks the
association between poverty and violent political action.6
For instance, Süleyman, a nineteen years old student of
dentistry in a prestigious university in Ankara, took his
younger twin brothers who were high-school students,
and joined the IS in spring of 2015. Their father was a
university professor.
A disproportionate number of jihadist foreign fighters
from Turkey are ethnic Kurds. The sample has the records
of ethnicity of 326 individuals, 147 of whom – or 44
percent – are Kurds, well above the Kurdish population
of Turkey, estimated at 15 to 20 percent. This dual pattern
among Kurds in Turkey to fight for either religious or
ethno-nationalist goals likely reflects their lack of strong
national identification with the Republic of Turkey. Their
experience as a marginalized minority in the Republic
facilitates their decision to take arms for alternative
political platforms. At the same time, jihadists and ethnonationalists tend to come from different Kurdish provinces.
As noted above, YPG fighters come from localities with
strong networks of Kurdish nationalist mobilization.
The average vote share of Kurdish nationalist parties
and candidates in three parliamentary elections in 2011
and 2015 were 84 percent in Hakkari, 81 in Şırnak, 73 in
Diyarbakır, and 64 in both Mardin and Van. As Table 1
demonstrates, these five provinces are also characterized
by high levels of YPG recruitment. In contrast, jihadist
Kurdish foreign fighters typically come from localities
with dense Islamist networks (i.e., provinces with a history
of popular informal brotherhoods and formal piety
An overwhelming majority of jihadists are men even if
some Turkish women ended up joining the IS. This is in
sharp contrast to Kurdish foreign fighters whose ranks
include large number of women. Unlike individuals who
join Kurdish movements, biographical availability (i.e.,
having few family obligations and life commitments) does
not seem to be a significant factor in jihadist foreign fighter
mobilization. In terms of age distribution, jihadist foreign
fighters tend to be slightly older than Kurdish foreign
fighters who typically join the armed struggle as teenagers
or in their early twenties. While a plurality of Turkish
citizens who fight with the jihadist in Syria are their
twenties, a considerable number of them are individuals
who in their thirties and forties. Furthermore, and unlike
Kurdish foreign fighters, many jihadists are married with
children at the time of their decision to travel to Syria. In
fact, many of them take their families to Syria. Regarding
5 For instance, Bergen, Peter, Courtney Schuster, and David Sterman.
ISIS in the West: The New Faces of Extremism. New America. November
2015. Available at https://na-production.s3.amazonaws.com/
documents/ISP-Isis-In-The-West_2015.pdf.
6 For instance, See Alan B. Krueger, and Jitka Malečková, “Education,
Poverty and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection?” The Journal of
Economic Perspectives 17 (Fall 2003): 119-44.
69
associations) and relatively weaker Kurdish nationalist
presence. The average vote share of Kurdish nationalists
were 15 percent in Adıyaman, and 32 in Bingöl, two
Kurdish majority provinces with high levels of jihadist
mobilization. These observations point to the importance
of face-to-face relations and quotidian contacts for violent
mobilization.
(e.g., Kurdish/Muslim suffering) are associated with higher
risk acceptance and greater urge to fight against perceived
sources of collective threat. Furthermore, they make the
logistics of joining the fighting groups in Syria easier and
contribute to its feasibility.
The second question concerns the effects of returning
foreign fighters for peace and security in Turkey. These
effects are twofold. First, the PKK’s decision to organize an
urban resistance by the fall of 2015 was a reflection of the
strategies it developed and mastered during the Syrian civil
war. Many fighters who fought against the IS in Kobanî and
other cities also participated in battles of cities in Kurdish
towns from fall 2015 to spring 2016. These battles where
Turkish security forces imposed indefinite curfews and
used heavy weaponry destroyed large sections of Kurdish
towns and resulted in levels of civilian victimization
unseen since the 1990s.7
Dynamics of Recruitment and Implications
This brief analysis provides some tentative responses
to two important questions. What are the factors
contributing to the decision of Turkish citizens to fight in
Turkey? What are the implications of the foreign fighter
mobilization for Turkish politics? Regarding the first
question, several patterns can be detected. First, pecuniary
considerations do not seem to play a decisive role in the
decisions of these foreign fighters who face dire conditions
and life-threatening risks in Syria. In fact, many of them
come from relatively well-off backgrounds. Next, the
role of state repression and political violence seems to
have limited influence on their decisions. Many foreign
fighters from Turkey joined the YPG during a period
of truce between the Turkish state and PKK that lasted
until the summer of 2015. Many were active in Kurdish
political associations before their decision to travel to
Syria and some were subject to various forms of repressive
state practices, including detentions and disciplinary
policies given their activism. In contrast, most jihadist
fighters, especially the ones who joined the IS, did not
have a history of political activism and were not subject to
persecution. In this regard, pre-recruitment socialization
experiences of Kurdish nationalist and jihadist fighters
appear to diverge. Third, many ethno-nationalist and
jihadist fighters are often embedded in face-to-face
networks (e.g., local party branches and associations
affiliated with the Kurdish political movement in the
case of former, local mosques and tea houses in the case
of latter) characterized by repeated interactions before
taking arms. These networks generate not only dense
social ties conducive to group solidarity but also frames of
collective threat perception and victimhood transcending
national borders. Such frames based on moral outrage
Next, Turkey has a history of returnee jihadists staging
large-scale attacks directly targeting civilians. A group of
jihadists trained in al-Qaeda camps carries out a several
attacks in 2003 and 2004, including the suicidal bomb
explosions targeting the HSBC building and British
Consulate in Istanbul. Similarly, the assault on the U.S.
consulate in Istanbul in July 2008 was plotted and executed
by individuals who had been to al-Qaeda camps in
Afghanistan. The primary targets of these attacks were the
symbols of non-Muslim presence in Turkey. As returnee
IS militants expanded their target selection, returnee
jihadist violence became an unprecedented source of
terrorist threat in Turkey by 2015. The deadliest terrorist
attack in the modern Turkish history has been the Ankara
bombing on October 20, 2015. Two suicide bombers
blew themselves in the midst of a political rally organized
by opposition groups, killing more than 100 individuals.
One of the bombers was Yunus Emre Alagöz, a 25 -yearold from the Kurdish town of Adıyaman. He traveled to
Afghanistan 2009 before joining the IS with the outbreak
of the Syrian civil war. His younger brother Şeyh Abdullah
7 For a brief empirical analysis of civilian victimization, see https://
politicalviolenceataglance.org/2016/09/23/violence-in-turkey-isincreasingly-resembling-violence-in-syria-heres-data-to-show-why.
70
The Kurdish Question
who also joined the IS in Syria, was the suicide bomber in
the Suruç attack, targeting another group of leftist activists
on July 22, 2015. Turkish security forces have dismantled
several local IS cells and captured dozens of militants since
then. All returnees who engaged in violence in Turkey
were affiliated with the IS rather than any other group
in Syria indicating the importance of takfiri ideology in
shaping the nature of violence (i.e., indiscriminate attacks
against civilians) and target selection (i.e., Turkey as a land
of war, dar al-harb). At the same time, extensive research
is required to identify the source of variation in returnee
behavior and to explore to distinguish the characteristics of
violent returnees from non-violent ones.
71
Is there still hope for Turkish democracy?
The night of July 15, 2016 marked a distinct moment in Turkish democratic history as hundreds of
thousands of Turks took to the streets to defy a coup attempt. Yet only a few months later, Turkish
police moved to detain scores of MPs from the pro-Kurdish opposition party the HDP. In the months
since the failed coup, tens of thousands of academics, journalists and civil society activists have been
purged from their jobs, with many imprisoned. The government’s war with the PKK has escalated
dramatically. This POMEPS Studies collection poses a sobering question: do we now have conclusive
evidence that Turkey should no longer be considered a democracy?
The answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no. The dramatic post-coup developments may be
proof of the political system’s evolution into a hybrid regime: competitive authoritarianism.
As defined by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, in competitive authoritarian regimes “formal
democratic institutions are widely viewed as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political
authority. Incumbents violate those rules so often and to such an extent, however, that the regime fails
to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy.” Such political regimes blend democratic
appearance with strong authoritarian features, ruling by “velvet fist.”
While the procedural democratic institutions operate in form, they are entirely devoid of substance.
Executive, judicial, legislative, economic and media institutions are contorted in ways that advantage
the governing party. Contemporary examples of competitive authoritarianism include Putin’s Russia,
Orban’s Hungary, Maduro’s – and formerly Chavez’s – Venezuela, Mohamad’s Malaysia, Sissi’s Egypt
and now Erdogan’s Turkey.
Understanding Turkey’s evolution into such a hybrid regime helps reconcile the continuing
importance of electoral institutions with the sharp deterioration in public freedoms. Well before the
failed coup attempt, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had begun pushing for constitutional changes to
replace the parliamentary system in Turkey with a presidential one, which would centralize power in
the presidency and weaken key checks and balances built into the parliamentary system.
Erdogan’s moves toward autocratic rule have little to do with his Islamism, and a great deal to do with
an utterly normal quest for temporal power. Erdogan’s autocratic tendencies, as revealed over the last
half decade, look like those of any leader who has been in power too long and become incapable of
imagining a state without him in charge.
Turkey’s democratic deterioration did not begin with this year’s failed coup. After years as a thriving
democracy, data from Freedom House shows that beginning in 2009 Turkey has experienced a
sharply downward trend. Indicators of freedom of expression, pluralism, rule of law, freedom of
association suffered the sharpest declines. This trend took a sharply downward turn around the Gezi
Park protests in the summer of 2013 and fell again after the government escalated its confrontation
with its Kurdish citizens following the AKP’s weak performance in the June 2015 Parliamentary
election.
72
Conclusion
But this does not mean that the failed coup had no impact. Just as the Arab uprisings drove
challenged regimes to more extreme forms of repression, the failed coup triggered Erdogan’s extreme
sense of threat from domestic enemies. His assault on state and civil society institutions, particularly
against the media and academia, goes far beyond the reasonable. Unfortunately, many of the state and
societal institutions that he associates with that threat are also those that would traditionally provide
structural defense against authoritarian descent. The very real recent coup experience makes it more
difficult to parse out what is meant as defensive protection against another putsch and what is an
offensive move against political enemies.
One way of determining whether Turkey should be viewed as a democracy or as a hybrid regime
is if it is possible for the government to actually change through elections. The intense debate
among scholars of Turkey at the POMEPS workshop highlights that the answer is not immediately
obvious. Some irregularities notwithstanding, elections are still rated as mostly free and fair. Both
the government and the opposition have expressed commitment to upholding the electoral process,
rejecting extra-democratic interventions and honoring the people’s will. The military’s influence on
the democratic process had already been greatly reduced before the coup, and civilian oversight over
the military is established. And only 18 months ago, the AKP did fail to win a parliamentary majority.
But if the June 2015 election proved that the AKP could lose, it also proved that the party’s ability
to remain in power despite defeat. Erdogan took advantage of the inability of his opponents to form
a viable coalition and in August exercised his prerogative to call snap elections after the failure of
coalition negotiations. The AKP then regained its majority in the November election. While deeply
frustrating to Erdogan’s opponents, these political maneuvers fell well within the bounds of normal
parliamentary politics. Less normal, however, was Erdogan’s decision to escalate war with the Kurds
in the intervening period, effectively changing the political context to undermine the emergent HDP
opposition party.
Since the failed coup attempt, Erdogan has gone significantly further beyond the bounds of normal
democratic politics in ways that could permanently change the systemic rules. The AKP has sought
to channel the overwhelming outflow of support behind the democratically elected government
into a more robust consolidation of power. This has most clearly been seen in the unprecedented
purge against non-loyalists in the country. The AKP has accused the Islamist Gulen movement
of sponsoring the coup, launching a shockingly wide-ranging purge of alleged Gulenists in the
bureaucracy and elsewhere. The purge has extended far beyond Gulenists, targeting Kurds, secular
and liberal groups, and other political opponents.
The Turkish government’s assault on the infrastructure of democratic political life poses the sharpest
challenge to the notion that the country can remain a democracy. In particular, its failure to uphold
press freedom and the scale of purges of the opposition and independent civil society suggests an
intention to pursue domination.
The state of press freedom and Internet freedom has suffered the most, ultimately bringing Turkey
to the league of most repressive regimes around the world. Since the declaration of the State of
73
Emergency on July 20, the number of media outlets shut down by the government soared to more
than 170, including newspapers, magazines, radio stations, publishers and TV stations. Currently, 145
journalists are imprisoned, making Turkey the worst jailer of journalists globally. Reporters Without
Borders ranks Turkey 151 out of 180 countries worldwide in its 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
Similarly, Turkey regularly slows or shuts down the Internet to certain regions, blocks access to social
networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp, and bars VPN services that help
circumvent social media bans. On both press freedom and Internet freedom, Turkey has regressed
into the “not free” category in Freedom House ratings.
Suppression of the media and the Internet primarily serves to stifle oppositional discourse and to
intimidate critical voices, both of which are vital elements of democratic governance. A society that
is ill informed and collectively manipulated by censorship lacks the means to hold the government
accountable for its actions.
A Turkish descent into autocracy has long been restrained not only by a robust democratic culture
and strong civil society, but also by international alliances incentivizing democratic practice.
Those international restraints have also weakened in recent years. Turkish foreign policy is quickly
moving away from the historical anchors of democratization. Erdogan could not have helped but
notice that the Obama administration did little in the face of Egypt’s military coup, Bahrain’s brutal
sectarian repression, or the autocratic backsliding in most of its other regional allies. To this point
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has shown little interest in promoting democracy. Even if he
did, American reliance on Turkey for its wars in Syria and Iraq, along with a rabidly anti-American
nationalist discourse that dominates Turkish media, helps deflect any U.S. pressure on human rights
or democracy. Meanwhile, the European Union has edged closer to suspending the long moribund
EU-Turkey accession talks. Turkey’s ties to NATO have weakened to historically low levels, while
Turkish-Russian security cooperation is picking up pace. The Turkish government has indicated
willingness to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Erdogan’s purge of political enemies, arrest of opposition politicians, and assault on political liberties,
the media and civil society pose a direct and serious threat to the underpinnings of democracy. Many
have also expressed their legitimate concerns about his bid to revise the constitution, concentrating
powers in the presidency. Despite all this, the electoral system remains a silver lining, demonstrating
the possibility – however distant it appears at this moment – for autocratic ambitions to be checked
at the ballot box. As long as that chance exists, Turkey’s slide to authoritarianism will remain partial
and potentially reversible. But regional and international trends suggest that any such pushback will
have to come from within.
A. Kadir Yildirim, Rice University’s Baker Institute
Marc Lynch, George Washington University, POMEPS
74
The Project on Middle East Political Science
The Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) is a collaborative network that aims to increase
the impact of political scientists specializing in the study of the Middle East in the public sphere and in
the academic community. POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East
Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York
and the Henry Luce Foundation. For more information, see http://www.pomeps.org.
COVER PHOTO: LETICIA BARR